Structured illumination for communications and bioscience using GaN micro-LED arrays interfaced to CMOS

Gallium-Nitride-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have emerged over the last two decades as highly energy-efficient, cost-effective, compact and robust light sources. While general purpose lighting has been the dominant application thus far, a variety of other applications can also exploit these advantageous properties, including optical communications, fluorescence sensing and bioscience. Micro-LEDs arrays of individually-addressable LED pixels, each pixel typically 100 µm or less, offer further advantages over conventional LEDs such as extremely high modulation bandwidths and spatio-temporally controllable illumination patterns. These arrays are also readily compatible with flip-chip integration with CMOS electronic driver arrays. Here we report how these CMOS-controlled micro-LED arrays enable “smart lighting” solutions, capable of providing services such as wireless data communication and indoor navigation in conjunction with illumination. We also demonstrate how this smart functionality opens up novel bioscience applications, including depth-specific in-vivo optical neural probes and wireless transfer of measured data.