Design of inclined omni-directional reflector for sidewall-emission-free micro-scale light-emitting diodes

•This paper proposes a complete design, simulation, and fabrication of ODR for high-efficiency and sidewall-emission-free µLED pixels with inclined sidewalls.•The µLED laminated structure is established to analyze the sidewall emission with an optimal inclination angle by two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method.•The overall LEE of the inclined µLED pixel with ODR can be increased by 2.24 times and the sidewall emission is reduced by 99.6% compared with conventional vertical µLED pixels.•An ODR sample is prepared by magnetron sputtering, and an overall high reflectance of ∼ 99% covering the full visible spectrum at different incident angles is obtained.•The experimental results are highly consistent with the simulation, which provides important guiding significance for µLED displays.