Lighting companies can use Micro LED technology or can spell another piece of "sky" [full text]

Scientific and technological developments in recent years, due to the increasingly competitive, LED display products growing homogenization and shrinking profit margins. In order to break the long-term, low-profit, embarrassing situation and seek survival and development in the market reshuffling, LED display companies have been actively deploying in technological innovation, and have turned their attention to Micro LED, AR/VR, 3D and other fields.

The era of homogenization Enterprises can use Micro LED technology or can spell another "day"

According to the latest research from LEDinside, the LED display technology of the new generation of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and organic light-emitting displays (OLEDs) attracts attention from Apple, Sony, and global display supply chain companies. In the future, the potential market size will be about 30 to 40 billion U.S. dollars (approximately 207 billion to 276 billion U.S. dollars).

Micro LED technology, namely LED microfabrication and matrix technology. Refers to an array of high-density and tiny-size LED arrays integrated on a single chip. For example, each pixel of the LED display can be addressed and turned on individually. This can be seen as a miniature version of the outdoor LED display. The pixel distance is from millimeters. Grade is reduced to micron level. The Micro LED display is a low-level LED display driver circuit fabricated using a normal CMOS integrated circuit manufacturing process, and then an MOCVD machine is used to fabricate an LED array on the integrated circuit, thereby realizing a micro display screen, that is, an LED display. A smaller version of the screen. .

The advantages of Micro LED are obvious. It inherits the characteristics of high efficiency, high brightness, high reliability, and fast response time of inorganic LEDs, and it has the characteristics of self-luminous without backlight source, and it is more energy-saving, simpler in structure, and smaller in size. Thin and other advantages.

In addition, Micro LED also has a great feature is the resolution is high. Because of the ultra-miniature, the resolution of the performance is particularly high; it is said that if the Apple iPhone 6S uses a micro LED, the resolution can easily exceed 1500ppi, which is 3.75 times higher than that of the original Retina display 400PPi.

Compared with OLED, its color is more easily and accurately debugged, has a longer luminous life and higher brightness, and has better material stability, long life, no image imprinting and other advantages. Therefore, after the OLED is another light and power-saving display technology, its commonality with the OLED is also required to drive the TFT backplane, so the TFT technology level is IGZO, LTPS, Oxide.

Speaking of the current status of MicroLED development, just as Nouvoyance’s current CEO is also the founder of P-pixels in Samsung's OLED panel, said Candice Brown-Elliott. Before Apple acquired LuxVue, only a few people knew and engaged in the field, and now many people have started. Discuss this technique. From the recent Taiwan Solid State Lighting Symposium, it was reported that Leti, Texas Tech University and Play Nitride were presenting their Micro LED R&D results at a seminar.

Leti introduced the iLED matrix, its blue EQE9.5%, brightness up to 107Cd/m2; 5.9% green EQE, brightness up to 108Cd/m2, using quantum dots to achieve full-color display, Pitch only 10um, future goals 1um. Leti short-range plans to cut into the smart lighting, medium-distance into the HUD and HMD market 2-3 years, grab VR / AR heat, remote target is to cut into large-size display applications within 10 years.

According to Taiwan’s Play Nitride’s Pixe LED TM display technology, which is also based on GaN, the company is now transferring to the panel through transfer technology, and the transfer rate can reach 99%!

It can be seen that many companies have followed up on Micro LED technology and the pace of development has accelerated. However, as far as Apple itself is concerned, this technology belongs to Apple's lab stage technology, and Apple itself has also bet on many new industries. Therefore, whether or not to introduce mass production in the future remains to be seen.

According to a recent study by LEDinside, LEDinside manufacturers are trying to overcome the high manufacturing cost of Micro LED and promote the development of Micro LED. If the total replacement of the size of the existing LCD components to be estimated, including backlight modules, LCD, polarizers, etc., Micro LED future potential market size of about 300 to 400 billion US dollars.

LEDinside researcher Chu Yuchao said that the size of LED chips used by Micro LED in various applications, huge transfer methods, and drive solutions are all different. Therefore, the market size that can be created is still difficult to estimate, but if it replaces existing monitors, The scale of the components to estimate, the market size can not be underestimated.

Judging from the dynamics of the current big manufacturers, the Micro LED display, CLEDIS, which Sony showed at CES this year has excellent performance in resolution, brightness, and contrast, and has taken a big step towards the commercialization of Micro LED. However, according to LEDinside statistics, the current manufacturing cost of Micro LED is still 3 to 4 times higher than that of existing LED products. Therefore, manufacturers are actively trying to achieve cost reduction by increasing the added value of products, and improving the chip and transferring technology yield. It takes 3 to 5 years to replace the existing LCD products.

Chu Chaochao pointed out that the manufacturing cost of Micro LED has remained high because the related technical bottlenecks are still to be broken, such as the increase in yield, Mass Transfer technology, etc., and because the industries involved span LEDs, semiconductors, and panels. Upstream and downstream supply chains, where chips, machines, materials, and testing equipment are all different from previous specifications, raise the threshold of technology, and the integration and communication between different industries also increase the time for R&D.

In addition to seeking to reduce costs, manufacturers are also actively developing the added value of Micro LED. Chu Chaochao stated that the huge amount of transfer technology used in the manufacturing process of Micro LED can be used to transfer micro-LEDs. At the same time, microelectronic components such as sensors can also be transferred to make the application of Micro LED even more imaginative. In the future, both in automotive display, VR devices, and even AR projection, optical sensing, fingerprint identification and other fields, there will be opportunities for Micro LED technology to shine.