Welcome to Edinburgh Instruments’ blog, celebrating our work in Raman, Photoluminescence, and Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging. Every month, we aim to highlight our pick for Map of the Month to show how our Raman and fluorescence spectrometers can be used to reveal all the hidden secrets in your samples.
November 2025
Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (FLIM) is a powerful tool for characterising the photoluminescent properties of LED materials. By mapping excited-state lifetimes, FLIM reveals defect-related losses that influence both efficiency and stability.
III–V semiconductors such as AlInGaP are particularly attractive for LEDs thanks to their tuneable direct bandgaps and high brightness in red, orange, and yellow emissions. In AlInGaP/GaAs LED chips, FLIM enables performance optimisation by visualising and mitigating semiconductor defects.
This Map of the Month highlights our recent Application Note on FLIM mapping of LED chips, featuring measurements carried out using our MicroPL upgrade, which transforms an FS5 or FLS1000 PL spectrometer into a FLIM microscope.
Using FLIM, we mapped the radiative recombination dynamics in AlInGaP/GaAs LEDs and observed a pronounced reduction in carrier lifetime at the chip edges – direct evidence of sidewall effects. These insights are key for improving fabrication processes and chip design, ultimately enhancing LED efficiency, and driving progress in solid-state lighting and display technologies.
If you’d like to learn more about this application, why not give the full Application Note a read?
