“The industry has different views on MicroLED. Personally, it is believed that it will take 3-5 years to mature commercialization.†Huo Dongming, director of the market of Ganzhao Optoelectronics, told Gaogong LED that “the early exploration period will last longer, but once it is hugely transferred Once solved, industrialization will accelerate."
Zhu Yulin, director of the management of Jingyuan Optoelectronic Products, also said that although all major manufacturers are currently developing and researching, everyone has encountered technical bottlenecks. First, as the size shrinks, the number of MicroLEDs used in display products will rise sharply. At this time, the demand for yield will be strict. Secondly, the huge transfer technology is still to be overcome.
For the commercialization of MicroLED, the industry has basically held a relatively consistent view: the prospect is worth looking forward to, but the road to commercialization is still far away.
It must be said that the MicroLED, which is regarded as the ultimate LED technology in the industry, has the advantages that LED and OLED can't match in terms of power consumption, brightness, response speed, contrast, color saturation and display density.
First, due to the difference in materials, Micro LEDs may perform better than OLEDs in terms of brightness, response speed, contrast, and color saturation. In terms of display density, the Micro LED can be further broken. In theory, if the Micro LED is used on the iPhone 8, the display density can reach 1500 ppi or more.
Another point worth noting is that MicroLED can be individually addressed for each pixel, and it can be illuminated separately, plus the high brightness unique to LEDs that everyone knows, so that the MicroLED screen can achieve high contrast and very beautiful images.
In addition, in terms of power consumption, Micro LEDs can be 90% lower than LCDs and 50% lower than OLEDs.
However, MicroLED also has many challenges. Li Yunli, chairman of the company, pointed out that the LCD and LED industries in Taiwan are very mature. There is no reason for MicroLED technology to be difficult. The only problem is that the transfer cost is too high. If customers do not care about the cost, the MicroLED display can be mass-produced almost immediately. Therefore, he believes that if you can overcome the transfer problem, MicroLED is a technology worth developing.
For the bottleneck problem of MicroLED technology, Ruifeng Optoelectronics Technology Director Xiao Xiaoming also said at the 2017 High-Tech LED Annual Meeting. "At present, MicroLED is not difficult from a technical point of view, but it has a relatively large selection from the process route and equipment. The challenge. What we can see is basically a verbal solution, but the actual equipment can be said to be unique."
In summary, we can draw the conclusion that in the short term, MicroLED will be inaccurate in the miniaturization and massive transfer of the epitaxial wafer, and the increase in the number of drives will lead to an increase in the cost of the drive circuit and the assurance of a single yield.
Despite this, the industry is still convinced that Micro LED will be the mainstream of next-generation display technology, and domestic and foreign giants have stepped in.
According to Bloomberg News on March 19, Apple is producing a MicroLED display in a secret factory in California to replace the OLED display currently used by Apple phones. Hundreds of engineers are working on the project, and this technology is likely to be used first for Apple Watch.
In fact, Apple previously acquired LuxVue Technologies, which develops Micro LED display panel technology. According to the Korean government, in the past ten years, Apple has applied for 11 patents related to MicroLED, and LuxVue has applied for 23 patents. This means that Apple has a total of 34 MicroLED patents.
The foreign media pointed out that some patents applied by Apple are not necessarily used in a certain product or technology. The purpose of Apple is to pre-position and contain competitors in advance, and occupy a dominant position in the future technological competition.
At this year's CES show, Samsung introduced the world's first MicroLED TV "The Wall", a 146-inch modular TV with MicroLED technology, with amazing clarity and no restrictions on size, resolution or form factor. . Samsung announced that "The Wall" will be available for sale in August.
At the same time, the news pointed out that LG Electronics executives visited the TV business unit in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province on February 21, and pointed out that it would prepare a larger MicroLED TV than Samsung’s The Wall TV by September this year. LG Electronics plans to use LG Innotek's MicroLED.
The domestic panel industry giant BOE has also joined the research and development of MicroLED. On March 15, BOE said on the investor interaction platform that the company has already carried out technical research on MicroLED and made some progress.
In addition, domestic LED chip giants including Jingyuan Optoelectronics, Huacan Optoelectronics, Dry Photoelectric, and Sanan Optoelectronics are also stepping up their layout, expecting to have a first-mover advantage in the future display field.
At present, only the crystal photoelectric and Osram two RGB tri-color LEDs can be supplied at the same time, and the crystal optoelectronics can obtain business opportunities. In terms of Micro LED technology, brightness is not the most important requirement. The main goal is to achieve zero defects and improve production yield. Looking into the future, it is possible for optoelectronics manufacturers with semiconductor equipment to establish their technological development in the MicroLED market for a long time.
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