Spontaneous Emission and Light Extraction Enhancement of Light Emitting Diode Using Partially-Reflecting Metasurface Cavity (PRMC)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel partially reflecting metasurface cavity (PRMC) design for LEDs that significantly improves light extraction efficiency and spontaneous emission rate, leading to higher power conversion efficiency and potential cost reduction.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new PRMC architecture for LEDs that enhances light extraction and emission rates using metasurface design, validated by full-wave simulations.

Findings

LEE improved by factor 4.0

SER improved by factor 1.9

PCE increased by factors up to 6.2

Abstract

The enhancement of the power conversion efficiency (PCE), and subsequent reduction of cost, of light emitting diodes (LEDs) is of crucial importance in the current lightening market. For this reason, we propose here a PCE-enhanced LED architecture, based on a partially reflecting metasurface cavity (PRMC) structure. This structure simultaneously enhances the light extraction efficiency (LEE) and the spontaneous emission rate (SER) of the LED by enforcing the emitted light to radiate perpendicularly to the device, so as to suppress wave trapping and enhance field confinement near the emitter, while ensuring cavity resonance matching and maximal constructive field interference. The PRMC structure is designed using a recent surface susceptibility metasurface synthesis technique. A PRMC blue LED design is presented and demonstrated by full-wave simulation to provide LEE and SER enhancements by factors 4.0 and 1.9, respectively, which correspond to PCE enhancement factors of 6.2, 5.2 and 4.5 for IQEs of 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75, respectively, suggesting that the PRMC concept has a promising potential in LED technology.