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Thermophotonics

LEDs feed on waste heat

Nature Photonics volume 9, pages 782–784 (2015)Cite this article

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Heating LEDs from room temperature to 615 K is found to increase their emission power fourfold. The finding suggests that thermophotonics could remove the need for heat sinks for high-power devices.

The next hot topic in LED research could literally turn out to be heat, or more precisely heat-assisted emission. A team of scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered that externally heating specially designed blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) can significantly increase emission power, with negligible decrease in device efficiency1. The finding is important because it offers not only a route to brighter LEDs but also a means to set them free from the bulky heat sinks that usually accompany high-power devices. It is also a somewhat surprising result, given that high device temperatures are known to contribute to efficiency droop in LEDs.

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Figure 1: A thermophotonic LED.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jani Oksanen and Jukka Tulkki are at the School of Science, Aalto University, PO Box 12200, FI-00076 AALTO, Finland,

    Jani Oksanen & Jukka Tulkki

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  1. Jani Oksanen
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  2. Jukka Tulkki
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Correspondence to Jani Oksanen or Jukka Tulkki.

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Oksanen, J., Tulkki, J. LEDs feed on waste heat. Nature Photon 9, 782–784 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.229

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