UC Case No. 2019-247
SUMMARY:
UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have developed a novel method to create a room temperature stable broadband tunable light emitter at the nanoscale.
BACKGROUND:
Because of their extraordinary mechanical, electrical, and optical properties at the nanoscale, newly developed two-dimensional materials have attracted wide attention for fabricating wideband tunable light emission sources. However, industrial applications using these two-dimensional materials are limited due to the fact that the band gap tunability by layer dependence can only cover specific emission wavelengths, corresponding to specific band gap values of the 2D material. Among these materials, layered black phosphorus exhibits exceptional properties at the nanoscale, including high carrier mobility, layer dependent band gap and photoemission, and anisotropic thermoelectric behavior. All these features make layered black phosphorus a desirable material for a variety of applications, but it still suffers from instability over the long term in ambient conditions.
INNOVATION:
Researchers at UCLA have developed a method to fabricate a wideband tunable light source at the nanoscale using rapidly heat-treated black phosphorus nanosheets in ambient. Using this method, the researchers have measured a tunable light emission between 590 nm to 720 nm with a tunability spectral resolution of 5 nm.
POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS:
- Optoelectronic applications
- Fiber optics technologies
- Optical communication technologies
- Light emitting diodes at the nanoscale
- Nanolasers
ADVANTAGES:
- Tunable light emission over a large spectral range between 590 nm to 720 nm (equivalent of 130 nm bandwidth)
- Light emission can be precisely controlled with a high spectral resolution
- Long term stability in ambient
STATE OF DEVELOPMENT:
The described method has been experimentally validated.