Computational upper-limit of directional light emission in nano-LED via inverse design

Abstract

We demonstrate directional light emission in nano-LEDs using inverse design. Standard light-extraction strategies in LEDs have been limited to surface roughening or suppressing guided modes via LED structure modifications, which are insufficient for simultaneously achieving high-light extraction efficiency and directional emission. In this work, we use inverse design to discover high-efficiency directional emitting nano-LEDs. We first investigate the computational upper bounds of directional emission using free-form grayscale material, where material permittivity indicates an intermediate state between air and SiO 2 . For a narrow emission angle (