Beyond Blue: New Horizons in Nitrides (Platform Grant Renewal)

超越蓝色：氮化物的新视野（平台资助续订）

基本信息

批准号：
EP/M010589/1
负责人：
Rachel Oliver
金额：
$ 124.78万
依托单位：
University of Cambridge
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2015
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2015 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FM010589%2F1
关键词：
Beyond Blue New Horizons Nitrides

项目摘要

Our research is based on gallium nitride and its alloys, an amazing family of materials which can emit light over a wide range of colours - from the infra-red (IR) to the ultra-violet (UV). Already these materials are widely used in light emitting devices that are part of our everyday lives, perhaps most commonly in blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs). The LDs are at the heart of the blu-ray HD-DVD player, whilst the blue LEDs are combined with phosphors that emit other colours of light to produce white light. Such white LEDs are now very common in bicycle lights, torches and back-lighting for displays on portable electronic devices from mobile phones to tablet computers.Cambridge and Manchester have been collaborating on materials for blue LEDs for over ten years. Our research has led to step changes in the understanding of the basic materials science and physics of the light emitting materials leading to improved LED efficiency. Also we have pioneered lower cost methods for the growth of the gallium nitride crystals used in LEDs which have been commercialised, and are currently being exploited by a UK company, Plessey, who are fabricating these devices at their UK factory in Plymouth. Whilst we aim to continue to improve both the performance and cost of our blue LED technology in collaboration with our industrial partners, enabling new applications, e.g. in health care systems, we are now looking beyond the blue LED to other applications of gallium nitride such as devices that will emit light in the green and UV parts of the spectrum. Currently nitride devices emitting in the green and UV have much lower efficiencies than blue LEDs, and this limitation prevents the full exploitation of the nitrides across the whole spectrum. Applying the successful Cambridge-Manchester approach of understanding the basic science underlying the materials' properties, and using this to drive device development, we aim to produce green LEDs for application in displays and in high quality white lighting for homes and offices. Perhaps even more significantly, UV LEDs could be a low-energy way to purify drinking water, which could save millions of lives in the developing worlds, and we are considering innovative approaches to the development of these devices. Looking beyond LEDs, we will carry out research on LDs and even single photon sources. These latter devices, which emit one -and only one - photon on demand, are an enabling technology for quantum cryptography and quantum computation. We are already world leaders in the design and fabrication of blue single photon sources. The horizons we wish to explore are not necessarily new colours but devices with astounding new capabilities, such as the emission of pairs of entangled photons. Entanglement - which Albert Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance" - is a peculiar phenomenon by which changes made to one of the entangled pair of particles affect the other, even if the two are many miles apart. Entanglement can be used to achieve totally secure transfer of information. Gallium nitride can also be used in electronic devices, and so another emerging research theme at Cambridge and Manchester is the development of nitride transistors which will reduce the energy wasted as heat in high power applications such as computer power supplies, motor drives or power inverters of photovoltaic systems.Overall, our research has the potential to provide clean water for millions, vastly reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and to enable totally secure communications but there are many new applications on the horizon for GaN, and we hope that this platform grant will help us to keep the UK at the forefront of this outstanding developing technology.

我们的研究基于氮化镓及其合金，这是一个令人惊叹的材料系列，可以发出多种颜色的光 - 从红外线 (IR) 到紫外线 (UV)。这些材料已经广泛应用于我们日常生活中的发光器件，最常见的可能是蓝光发光二极管 (LED) 和激光二极管 (LD)。 LD 是蓝光 HD-DVD 播放器的核心，而蓝色 LED 与发射其他颜色光的荧光粉结合以产生白光。这种白色 LED 现在在自行车灯、手电筒以及从手机到平板电脑等便携式电子设备显示屏的背光中非常常见。剑桥和曼彻斯特在蓝色 LED 材料方面的合作已有十多年了。我们的研究使人们对基础材料科学和发光材料物理学的理解发生了重大变化，从而提高了 LED 效率。此外，我们还开创了用于 LED 的氮化镓晶体生长的低成本方法，这些方法已经商业化，目前正由一家英国公司 Plessey 开发，该公司正在其位于普利茅斯的英国工厂制造这些设备。我们的目标是与工业合作伙伴合作，继续提高蓝色 LED 技术的性能和成本，从而实现新的应用，例如：在医疗保健系统中，我们现在将目光从蓝色 LED 转向氮化镓的其他应用，例如可发射光谱中绿光和紫外光的设备。目前，发射绿光和紫外光的氮化物器件的效率比蓝光 LED 低得多，这种限制阻碍了氮化物在整个光谱范围内的充分利用。我们应用剑桥-曼彻斯特成功的方法来了解材料特性背后的基础科学，并以此来推动设备开发，我们的目标是生产用于显示器以及家庭和办公室高品质白光照明的绿色 LED。或许更重要的是，UV LED 可以成为净化饮用水的一种低能耗方式，从而拯救发展中国家数百万人的生命，我们正在考虑开发这些设备的创新方法。除了LED之外，我们还将开展LD甚至单光子源的研究。后者的设备按需发射一个且仅一个光子，是量子密码学和量子计算的一项支持技术。我们在蓝色单光子源的设计和制造方面已经处于世界领先地位。我们希望探索的领域不一定是新颜色，而是具有令人惊叹的新功能的设备，例如发射纠缠光子对。纠缠——阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦称之为“幽灵般的超距作用”——是一种奇特的现象，其中一个纠缠粒子的变化会影响另一个粒子，即使这两个粒子相距数英里。纠缠可用于实现完全安全的信息传输。氮化镓也可用于电子设备，因此剑桥和曼彻斯特的另一个新兴研究主题是氮化物晶体管的开发，这将减少高功率应用中以热量形式浪费的能量，例如计算机电源、电机驱动器或电力逆变器。总的来说，我们的研究有潜力为数百万人提供清洁水，大大减少能源消耗和温室气体排放，并实现完全安全的通信，但 GaN 即将出现许多新的应用，我们希望这个平台能够授予将帮助我们让英国保持领先地位这项杰出的开发技术。