Triple the density of the LEDs present in a screen to significantly improve the quality of the images: it is possible thanks to a new type of vertical micro-LED, obtained by stacking the different colors one on top of the other, developed by an international research group led from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The goal described in Nature could find application above all in virtual reality headsets.
In recent years there has been a rapid miniaturization of LEDs, now the standard technology for making screens of all kinds, from TVs to smartphones, but as has also happened for transistors, LEDs are now reaching a limit beyond which it is not possible to zoom out further.
A limit that is problematic for those types of screens used very closely, such as in virtual reality helmets, in which the observers are disturbed by the so-called 'door effect', i.e. seeing the black strips between a row of LEDs and the other.
Normally, to generate each luminous point of a screen is the combination of 3 Leds, of primary colors, placed very close to each other (laterally), but the new idea of the researchers was to review this architecture in depth.
The new 'vertical' LEDs are in fact made up of various micro-LEDs stacked together, a solution that makes it possible to increase, potentially triple, the number of LEDs in the same area.
Using 'vertical' LEDs, screens with much higher resolution could therefore be created, especially useful for virtual reality viewers and guaranteeing a better user experience.
