5/19/2024
Every spring, the ECE 443 LEDs and Solar Cells course encourages the class to address a grand societal challenge by applying what they’ve learned to create a project. The class explores energy conversion devices to enable energy-efficient and scalable light emitting diodes and solar cells as solutions to the grand challenges in energy, communication and health.
Written by
At The Grainger College of Engineering, our students are innovating to solve tomorrow’s problems. In ECE 443, students are building micro-LEDs for high-speed computation, photolithography, imaging blood vessels and simulating extraterrestrial agriculture.
Every spring, the ECE 443 LEDs and Solar Cells course encourages the class to address a grand societal challenge by applying what they’ve learned to create a project. The class explores energy conversion devices to enable energy-efficient and scalable light emitting diodes and solar cells as solutions to the grand challenges in energy, communication and health.
With support from MicroLink Devices and Crosslight, the class competed in two distinct project competitions: MicroLink Devices Best Project Award and the Crosslight Best Project Award.
This year, the Crosslight Best Project Award went to two outstanding projects.
Matthew Wang received the award for his project “High Frequency InGaN/Gan Micro LEDs for Optical Interconnect Applications.”
Demand is increasing for specialized high-speed computation that can handle the higher processing rates of modern AI hardware. Transferring data from the memory to the processor is a major bottleneck in current systems. Wang proposes optical interconnects, which can potentially increase the bandwidth of data transfers while reducing power and interference. His project looks at the design methods and tradeoffs when increasing the frequency bandwidth of micro-LEDs used to generate the data signals.
Ming-Yan Hsiao also received this award for the project “Exploring Possibility of Replacing 248 nm KrF with AlGaN LED in DUV Photolithography”.
With increasing enhancements of AlGaN LED’s external quantum efficiency and light output power and the popularity of ultra-violet LED photolithography, we may be able to use AlGaN to replace 248 nm KrF in deep ultra-violet lithography with a better power consumption efficiency and instantaneous on/off capability (ideal for high volume production) at lower fabrication cost. In this project, Hsiao aimed to simulate a 2D AlGaN LED with several state-of-art internal quantum efficiency enhancement techniques to show how an AlGaN LED can meet requirements as a “free-form” light source.
The MicroLink Devices Best Project Award also went to two excellent projects.
Dorian Tricaud received this award for “Application of LEDs in Intravascular Photoacoustic Imaging.”
Tricaud’s project aimed to use the Crosslight APSYS© software to create a set of LEDs capable of performing photoacoustic imaging. By using InGaN and InGaAs multi-quantum well structures, he achieved green and infrared wavelengths capable of imaging blood vessels and other organic compounds. To produce power output capable of high resolution, the power output of the device under high-current injection was modeled. Temperature regulation was necessary, which he resolved via a heat sink on the bulk of the material.
Finally, Matthew Constantine Pianfetti received this award for the project “Proxima Centauri-Emulating InGaN LED: Our Path to Extraterrestrial Agriculture.”
Recreating the light on other worlds enables experimentation into extraterrestrial agriculture, which is critical for a space-faring humanity to sustain itself. The closest star to ours is Proxima Centauri and the closest potentially habitable planet outside our solar system orbits it, Proxima Centauri b. InGaN is a direct bandgap material throughout its range, which enables increased relative efficiencies at any given energy level. The range of InGaN makes it a good choice to emulate light, as it can be found on other worlds. Pianfetti investigated InGaN as a potential material for emulating the light on Proxima Centauri b.
“ECE Illinois is at the center of the semiconductor heartland, and the students of ECE 443 design solutions to real-world problems with semiconductor devices.” said Professor Can Bayram, course director and associate professor in electrical and computer engineering.