Quantum Dots Integrated Deep-Ultraviolet Micro-LED Array Toward Solar-Blind and Visible Light Dual-Band Optical Communication

Optical wireless communication (OWC) systems are emerging as a crucial technique for the development of next-generation data transmission and acquisition, with a particular interest in the solar-blind deep-ultraviolet (DUV) as well as visible-light (VL) band, owing to their superior advantages in either free space or underwater application scenarios. A light-emitting device, which normally acts as a signal transmitter in OWC, capable of generating dual wavelengths, would certainly expand the capacity and functionality of OWC. Herein, we propose to vertically integrate DUV micro-LED-array with CdSe/ZnS blue color quantum dots to emit dual wavelengths, and strikingly, the device exhibits a bandwidth of 254 and 36 MHz and obtained the data rate of 586 and 55 Mbps using the on–off keying (OOK) modulation scheme, at the emission of 275 and 470 nm, respectively. Importantly, the associated bit error rate is under the forward error correction threshold, indicating the feasibility of implementing this low-cost and compact device for practical solar-blind and VL dual-band communication, i.e., in marine science and ocean exploration.