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RESEARCHERS at the University of Manchester have created LEDs that are engineered on an atomic level.
The team was led by Nobel Laureate Sir Kostya Novoselov, and they constructed the LED by combining different 2D crystals, resulting in an ultra-thin (10-40 atoms thick) device that emits light from across its whole surface.
According to the researchers, this demonstrates that semi-transparent smart devices can be created using this approach of producing 2D “designer materials”.
The foundation of this approach is based on the one-atom thick graphene, first isolated and explored in 2004. Since then, researchers have discovered other 2D materials, including boron nitiride and molybdenum disulphide.
This has now expanded, with researchers building heterostructures, or stacked layers of various 2D materials, in order to create ultra-thin material with custom properties, then using quantum wells to control the movements of electronics.
By preparing the heterostructures on elastic and transparent substrates, graphene and other 2D materials can be used to create optoelectronics for next-generation devices that are thin, flexible, and translucent.
The researchers say the structures are robust, and have been consistently operating over many weeks of measurement. Additionally, the power efficiency of the LED device is already comparable to organic LEDs.