Micro-light-emitting diode with n-GaN/NiO/Au-based resistive-switching electrode for compact driving circuitry

Micro-light-emitting diode (μLED) displays have been receiving great attention due to their outperformance over competitor technologies such as organic LED and liquid crystal displays. However, the transfer of the μLED chips onto the backplane and their driving technology are technical hurdles for developing future μLED displays. Here, we introduce a simple method to effectively control each μLED pixel by using light-emitting memories (LEMs), in the form of μLEDs with n-GaN/NiO/Au-based resistive switching elements, which have a unipolar switching behavior with good retention (>10⁵ s) and acceptably high on/off ratios (10²) at an operating voltage of 4 V. The resulting devices optically exhibited higher output powers than typical indium tin oxide-based μLEDs. In addition, we investigated the switching mechanism of the proposed LEM device using transmission electron microscopy and secondary-ion mass spectroscopy. The proposed method is expected to offer an innovative route for driving future image-storage displays with high resolution.