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Terahertz optics
Shaping single-crystal silicon
Silicon, owing to its high transparency
and relative abundance, is potentially
attractive for use in lenses operating in the
infrared and terahertz spectral regions.
Unfortunately, however, silicon cracks
easily under even small loads, which makes
it hard to shape and process in a cost-
effective manner. Now, scientists in Japan
have developed a process for shaping
JSAP
single-crystal silicon that could open the
door to the cheap mass-production of
silicon aspherical lenses and lens arrays
(Appl. Phys. Express 4, 106501; 2011).
The technique, reported by Kohei
Morishita, Kazuo Nakajima, Takashi Fujii
and Masakazu Shiinoki from Kyoto
University, Murata Manufacturing and
OMRON Corporation, involves using heat
and pressure to ‘press’ single-crystal
silicon into classic lens shapes.
Anyone who has ever handled a thin
sample of silicon knows only too well
that it is brittle and fragile. Morishita
and co-workers have now shown that
single-crystal silicon can be pressed and
successfully reshaped at a temperature of
1,405 °C — just below its melting point of
around 1,414 °C. First, they placed 3-mm-
diameter, 2-mm-high silicon cylinders
between a lower planar die and an upper
Organic light-emitting diodes
Efficient and flexible solution
Researchers have developed flexible thin-film OLEDs that exhibit high efficiencies at green wavelengths without
the use of a high-refractive-index substrate.
Karl Leo
O
rganic light-emitting diodes
(OLEDs) are novel light sources
that offer attractive applications for
flat-panel displays and general-purpose
lighting. Despite great improvements in
efficiency, most of the light from an OLED
remains trapped in the device, resulting
in a low external quantum efficiency
of 20–30%.
Now, reporting in Nature Photonics,
Zhibin Wang and co-workers present
a thin-film outcoupling enhancement
716
concave die with a radius of 7.5 mm. They
then applied loads to the cylinders in an
argon atmosphere. A load of 0.8 kN applied
for two hours successfully compressed the
samples into the shape of the surrounding
dies, thus forming plano-convex lenses.
The researchers investigated the
deformation process by collecting
and analysing electron-backscattering
diffraction patterns. They discovered
that the reshaping process does not rely
on melting and solidification but instead
involves plastic deformation and the
movement of dislocations. To investigate
the dislocations, which can degrade
optical performance, the team etched the
samples with a solution that reveals grain
boundaries and dislocations, and indeed
found a high density of dislocations.
method1 consisting of a weak optical
cavity on a flexible substrate with a non-
ITO (indium tin oxide) anode that can
push the external quantum efficiency
of phosphorescent OLEDs to 63% at
green wavelengths.
Organic semiconductors are currently
being investigated for a wide range of
electronic and optoelectronic applications.
This interest was spurred by novel devices
such as flexible electronic circuits, OLEDs
and organic solar cells. For OLED devices,
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© 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
As for optical quality, the reference
unpressed single-crystal silicon had a
transmittance of ~55% in the wavelength
range of 2–14 μm, whereas that of the
hot-pressed lenses was just 10–20%.
However, the researchers were able to
improve this performance considerably
by applying an annealing process; heat-
treating the lenses at 1,405 °C caused
new grains to form by recrystallization,
thus reducing the density of dislocations.
The new grains formed in regions of
high stress — exactly where the sample
quality needed to be improved. The
transmittance of the heat-treated lenses
improved to around 40% across the
wavelength range of 2–14 μm.
When placed inside a sensor module,
polished pressed lenses demonstrated a
performance very similar to conventional
silicon lenses made by grinding and
polishing. The researchers say that
their pressed silicon lenses could be
improved further by optimizing the
post-pressing heat-treatment and
hope that their approach will help
support the widespread deployment of
terahertz technology.
David Pile
high power efficiency — the conversion of
electrical energy into a photon flux — is a
key parameter for many applications. This
is particularly true for lighting applications,
which often require efficiencies well beyond
what is possible with classical technologies
such as fluorescent tubes.
Achieving high power efficiencies in
an OLED requires the fulfilment of three
principal factors. First, the product of the
driving voltage and the electron charge
must be low — of order of the photon

Glass
ITO
Emitting centre
Organic layer
Cathode
Figure 1 | Photon modes in an OLED. External
modes are marked in green, substrate modes in
red and waveguide/plasmonic modes in blue.
energy. This requirement has almost been
met, with voltages now approaching the
lower thermodynamic limit 2. Second, the
internal quantum efficiency of the OLED
must be close to 1; that is, almost every
electron–hole pair must create a photon.
This condition is well-met thanks to the
introduction of phosphorescent emitter
molecules3. Using such materials, both
singlet and triplet excitons, which are
generated by electrical pumping in a ratio
of 3:1, can radiatively recombine to produce
photons. Third, the outcoupling of photons
from the OLED organic layer to free space
must be as efficient as possible.
There are three ways for the generated
photons to leave the organic layers.
They can outcouple to an external light
mode and leave the device through the
transparent anode (ITO) and substrate
(glass), as shown in Fig. 1. This, however,
is only accomplished by 20–30% of the
photons generated within an emission
angle cone of around 40°. The majority
of the photons outcouple to either
substrate modes in the glass or waveguide
modes in the ITO and organic layers.
Coupling to waveguide modes occurs
when the photon path exceeds the critical
angle of total internal reflection due
to the large refractive-index mismatch
between the organic layers, substrate
and air. Coupling reflects the photons
back through the substrate and organic
layers to the reflective cathode. The
zigzag path taken by the photons is
well-described by geometrical ray optics
and results in travelling distances in the
centimetre range. It is relatively easy
to convert these reflected photons into
external photons by roughing the outer
substrate–air interface using a lens array or
nature photonics | VOL 5 | DECEMBER 2011 | www.nature.com/naturephotonics
Plastic
Ta2O5
Au
Organic
Al
Figure 2 | Schematic of the OLED device structure on low-cost flexible plastic with metal electrodes.
applying a suitable sandblasting technique,
for example.
Unfortunately, the photons emitted
at such a shallow angle do not enter
the substrate but are instead trapped
as waveguide modes in the organic–
transparent electrode layer system. These
waveguide modes can be one of two types:
either a zigzag mode that has a maximum
in the organic layer, or a plasmonic
mode that moves mainly along the metal
cathode and is therefore quickly absorbed.
Unfortunately, most of the photons that
enter into a waveguide mode end up in the
plasmonic mode.
There are three different ways of
outcoupling these photons. The first is
quite simple: because both organic and
transparent anode layers have refractive
indices of around 1.8–1.9, the photons
can be outcoupled via a high-refractive-
index substrate of similar refractive
index 4. The whole OLED then functions
optically as a single thick layer, with most
of the photons comprising zigzag modes.
The plasmonic modes still exist but can
be well-suppressed, as recently shown
for high-efficiency white OLEDs5. The
drawback of this approach is that it requires
the use of high-refractive-index substrates
(>1.8), which are usually brittle, expensive
and poisonous.
The second way of improving
waveguide-mode outcoupling, although
conceptually elegant, is hampered
by several significant drawbacks. By
establishing a partially reflective contact —
a semitransparent anode — the OLED is
converted into an optical microcavity that
bundles photon modes in the forwards
direction6. However, this is essentially
an interference effect and is therefore
naturally wavelength-selective, rendering
it ineffective for use in white OLEDs.
Furthermore, this technique introduces
an unwanted angular dependence on the
emission colour.
The third approach is to structure
the active layers of the OLED in a way
© 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
news & views
that scatters the waveguide modes. This
requires the thin films to be structured
with fine resolution — a challenging task
in a device whose substrate roughness is
a critical issue. Although this technique
does improve outcoupling performance7,
it provides only a small enhancement to a
mediocre OLED and is therefore incapable
of reaching the efficiency levels attained by
the best OLEDs.
The outcoupling technique of
Wang et al.1 enables the realization of
flexible OLEDs without the use of a
high-refractive-index substrate. The
key step of their technique is to replace
the ITO transparent electrode with an
oxide–metal–oxide electrode stack.
They employ a multifunctional anode
stack consisting of a thin semitransparent
gold layer, which serves as a conductive
electrode, sandwiched between a thin-
film high-refractive-index layer made
of tantalum oxide (Ta2O5) on a flexible
plastic substrate — the optical coupling
layer — and a hole-injection molybdenum
trioxide organic layer (Fig. 2). The gold
layer forms a weak optical microcavity
with the aluminium cathode. Because the
design exploits a plastic substrate with a
relatively low refractive index (<1.6), a
high-refractive-index glass substrate is
not required.
Using this arrangement, Wang et al.
have obtained extremely high efficiencies
for devices emitting at green wavelengths1.
Devices containing these layers were
shown to exhibit a twofold increase in
external quantum efficiency (up to around
40%) at brightness levels of 10,000 cd m–2.
The external quantum efficiency and
power efficiency can be further improved
to 60% and 126 lm W–1, respectively,
at green wavelengths if a macroscopic
extractor — a hemispherical lens — is
used to outcouple the substrate modes. The
highest values achieved by Wang et al. are
63% and 290 lm W–1, which represents an
enhancement of around 2.5 over the ITO
reference device. The researchers achieved
717
news & views

correspondingly high power efficiencies
that are comparable to state-of-the-art
devices based on high-refractive-index
glass substrates and macro-extractors.
The concept presented by Wang et al.
elegantly solves two key problems for the
broad realization of OLED applications:
it enables much higher outcoupling
efficiencies thanks to the simple thin-film
approach, and it avoids the brittle and
cost-intensive ITO electrode employed in
most OLEDs. Moreover, the use of a plastic
substrate will help to enable low-cost mass-
production of flexible OLEDs using roll-to-
roll processing.
However, several challenging questions
remain. Although monochrome OLEDs
are used for displays, the biggest
application of OLEDs today is for the
lighting industry, which requires white-
light-emitting devices. Furthermore,
the approach of Wang et al. introduces
a weak microcavity due to the use of
gold film. Although the authors state
that the microcavity does not cause
spectral narrowing or introduce angular
dependence, no experimental proof is
provided. Their theoretical calculations
raise the question of whether the approach
is frequency- or angle-independent. It is
anticipated that this work will stimulate
research on these issues so that the
usefulness of the technology can be
fully exploited.
Karl Leo is at the Institut für Angewandte
Photophysik, Technische Universität Dresden,
Helmholtzstrasse 10, D01062 Dresden, Germany,
and the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic
Microsystems, Maria-Reiche-Str. 2, 01109
Dresden, Germany.
e‑mail: leo@iapp.de
References
1. Wang, Z. B. et al. Nature Photon. 5, 753–757 (2011).
2. Walzer, K., Maennig, B., Pfeiffer, M. & Leo, K. Chem. Rev. 107,
1233–1271 (2009).
3. Baldo, M. A. et al. Nature 395, 151–154 (1998).
4. Lu, M.‑H. & Sturm, J. C. J. Appl. Phys. 91,
595–604 (2002).
5. Reineke, S. et al. Nature 459, 234–238 (2009).
6. Nakayama, T., Itoh, Y. & Kakuta, A. Appl. Phys. Lett. 63,
594–595 (1993).
7. Saxena, K., Jain, V. K. & Mehta, D. S. Opt. Mater. 32,
❒ 221–233 (2009).

View from... Group IV Photonics

Hope from hybrids

The ease at which group iii–v semiconductors can now be integrated with silicon suggests that the need for a pure
silicon laser is rapidly fading.

Oliver Graydon

S
cientists involved in the development
of the silicon laser often tout the
convenience and cost-effectiveness
of working with a materials system that
is compatible with microelectronics
and CMOS fabrication as one of the key
motivations behind their research. Indeed,
these irrefutable benefits are highly
desirable by industry.
However, despite more than a decade of
research, the realization of an electrically
pumped pure silicon laser remains
frustratingly elusive. In fact, some may
doubt whether such a laser in a useful
form will ever become a reality. The main
difficulty lies in overcoming the physics of
silicon’s indirect bandgap, which prohibits
the usual radiative transition employed by
conventional semiconductor lasers.
Over the years, scientists have explored
a myriad of ways to generate light emission
from silicon, including doping with active
The Royal Society

rare-earth ions such as erbium, riddling

silicon with an array of nanoscale holes
to create porous silicon, or relying on
gain from nonlinear processes such as the
Raman effect. These schemes, although
capable of emitting light and even
The Royal Society at Carlton House Terrace, London, was host to this year’s Group IV Photonics conference.
achieving lasing, either require optical
pumping (and thus the presence of another
laser) or emit light only weakly, and are Fortunately, a rather pragmatic answer either wafer bonding or monolithic growth
therefore not considered as practical or is now growing in popularity — combining techniques. In principle, these ‘hybrid’
satisfactory solutions. group iii–v semiconductors with silicon by approaches offer the best of both worlds

718 nature photonics | VOL 5 | DECEMBER 2011 | www.nature.com/naturephotonics

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