There have been rapidly increasing demands for flexible lighting apparatus, and micrometer-scale light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are regarded as one of the promising lighting sources for deformable device applications. Herein, we demonstrate a method of creating a deformable LED, based on remote heteroepitaxy of GaN microrod (MR) p-n junction arrays on c-Al2O3 wafer across graphene. The use of graphene allows the transfer of MR LED arrays onto a copper plate, and spatially separate MR arrays offer ideal device geometry suitable for deformable LED in various shapes without serious device performance degradation. Moreover, remote heteroepitaxy also allows the wafer to be reused, allowing reproducible production of MR LEDs using a single substrate without noticeable device degradation. The remote heteroepitaxial relation is determined by high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy, and the density functional theory simulations clarify how the remote heteroepitaxy is made possible through graphene.
Using density functional theory calculations, atomic and electronic structure of defects in monolayer GeS were investigated by focusing on the effects of vacancies and substitutional atoms. We chose group IV or chalcogen elements as substitutional ones, which substitute for Ge or S in GeS. It was found that the bandgap of GeS with substitutional atoms is close to that of pristine GeS, while the bandgap of GeS with Ge or S vacancies was smaller than that of pristine GeS. In terms of formation energy, monolayer GeS with Ge vacancies is more stable than that with S vacancies, and notably GeS with Ge substituted with Sn is most favorable within the range of chemical potential considered. Defects affect the piezoelectric properties depending on vacancies or substitutional atoms. Especially, GeS with substitutional atoms has almost the same piezoelectric stress coefficients as pristine GeS while having lower piezoelectric strain coefficients but still much higher than other 2D materials. It is therefore concluded that Sn can effectively heal Ge vacancy in GeS, keeping high piezoelectric strain coefficients.