Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

How we made the microLED

Nature Electronics volume 6, page 257 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Micro-light-emitting-diode display applications are growing quickly as technology companies begin to use them in a range of products. Key to the development of these applications was the miniaturization of gallium nitride light-emitting diodes. Hongxing Jiang and Jingyu Lin recount how this was achieved.

In the late 1990s, blue and white light-emitting diode (LED) technology was making rapid progress and was poised to revolutionize the lighting and consumer electronics industries. At the time, our team at Kansas State University was investigating size and microcavity effects in gallium nitride (GaN) LEDs. During a dinner table discussion, we questioned what might happen if such an LED was reduced to the micrometre scale, and we decided to try to make micro-sized LEDs (microLEDs). We were hoping, in particular, to achieve a higher emission efficiency and be able to tailor the emission patterns.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: The first GaN microLED.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Hongxing Jiang & Jingyu Lin

Authors
  1. Hongxing Jiang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jingyu Lin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hongxing Jiang or Jingyu Lin.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Jiang, H., Lin, J. How we made the microLED. Nat Electron 6, 257 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-023-00940-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-023-00940-0

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing