Successfully obtaining technologies able to mass produce Micro LED products, Korean mid-sized LED maker Lumens begins to produce both small- and large-sized Micro LED display prototypes planned to be showcased at CES 2018.

eLux announced that the U.S. Patent Office has issued in early December US Patent No. 9,825,202 titled “Display with Surface Mount Emissive Elements”. This is the first issued eLux patent which covers the foundational work done on massively parallel fluidic assembly of µLEDs to make high resolution displays. 

A new war is looming in the display market. The rumor that Samsung may team up with the Micro LED supply chain in Taiwan has caught the attention of Foxconn CEO Terry Gou.

Taiwan-based LED chip manufacturer Epistar announced its business plan for 2018 will be around five cores—backlighting, high-end LED lighting, infrared application, automotive lighting, and innovative digital display. Ming-Chun Chou, General Manager of Epistar, stated the company will officially produce Mini LED in 2Q18 at the earliest.

LEDinside this time collected insights on Micro LED from seven experts. What do they think about Micro LED and the feasibility of its mass production? What are the elements they think Micro LED should have to be able to win the competition against LCD and OLED?

LED epi-wafers and chips supplier Epileds has posted flat revenue in 2H17 due to seasonal headwinds and the relocation of its factory. 

The global research company TrendForce held 2018 Forum on Key Trends in Electronic Components Industry on December 7, 2017. Here are the key excerpts from the forum.

Epistar General Manager Chou Ming-Chun revealed at the company’s investor conference on December 5 that Mini LED is likely to be mainstream in the backlight market.

Taiwan-based sapphire substrate supplier Crystalwise Technology suffered a loss per share of NTD 2.99 in the past three quarters in 2017 mainly due to the low price of patterned sapphire substrates (PSS). The market has gone through a reshuffle and gradually turned healthy in recent years.

LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, points out that LED manufacturers have turned to research and development of Mini LED, due to Micro LED’s technological bottlenecks which make it harder to realize commercialization in short term.

The new display technology Micro LED actually has a history of over a decade. After Apple acquired LuxVue Technology, it officially became famous. Its properties- high resolution, high brightness, real-time response, and low power consumption- win hearts of many A-list high-tech companies such as Apple, Sony, Google and Facebook, as well as companies in the display industry.

Rumors have been spreading like crazy since May that Samsung would acquire Taiwanese Micro LED startup PlayNitride. Sources from the industry recently leaked that the two companies are at the final stage of their talk.

The US Patent & Trademark Office this month published a patent application related to the foldable iPhone from Apple. In this patent, the iPhone maker includes Micro LED as one of the display materials for the model and liquid metal as the bendable part of the phone structure.

Apple is partnering with TSMC to develop silicon-based Micro LED displays, while Samsung Electronics is also planning to showcase a new Micro LED TV next year in January at CES 2018.

Solar-Tectic LLC announced a breakthrough OLED display technology that promises to revolutionize the industry by replacing the standard LTPS (low temperature polysilicon) process used world-wide by the major display manufacturers and thereby solving the industry's "backplane problem."

Inorganic microLEDs are the next big thing in displays, not as backlights for LCDs, but like OLEDs, as the actual light emitting pixel elements, ranging from applications in Micro-displays for Augmented /Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to wearables such as Smartwatches and Cellphones. Unlike OLED displays, however, they are far more robust and long-lived, and most importantly, far more efficient and much brighter, making them viable even for larger displays, such as video walls in advertising and in cinema in place of projection.  But to make the technology cost effective, manufacturing challenges abound, particularly as pixel sizes shrink in next generation micro-displays. For example, various coatings must be rapidly deposited in a precise, controlled manner, such as the Quantum Dots (QDs) integrated with the LEDs used in larger displays either to sharpen the color characteristics of traditional phosphors, or fully replace them in micro-displays, relying solely on QDs for color conversion. Better technology is needed for reliably depositing the various costly materials used, and even for rapidly assembling or arraying the microLEDs themselves.

Samsung officially released 34-foot Cinema Screen in 2017, and the screen has been installed at Lotte Cinema World Tower in Korea. This is the first product that brings LED digital display into the movie theater application around the world. Samsung’s goal is to take up 10% movie theater market in 2020.

Apple might be cutting the size of its Micro LED R&D team, but it does not seem to give up on the next generation display technology, a few sources reported. It is collaborating with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to develop an alternative approach to sidestep challenges including the notorious mass transfer of chips.

Much hope has been put in Micro LED to drive the next generation display technology, but there isn’t a concrete date to see it commercialized yet. The production cost is still high, and development of mass transfer technologies gets stuck. Even Apple is rumoured to have downsized its secret team that develops Micro LED in Taiwan.

There are many recent articles explaining mini LED or Micro LED. Some are correct, but some are not. Let LEDinside explain and tell you the differences between fine-pitch LED, mini LED and micro LED.

The Electronic & Optoelectronic System Research Lab (EOSRL) under the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is co-developing ultra fine-pitch Micro LED displays with PlayNitride, LED Driver IC expert Macroblock, and PCB maker Unimicron Techology, sources from the industry have revealed.

According to the latest report from LEDinside, a division of the market research firm TrendForce, 2018 Global LED Digital Display and Micro LED Display Market Outlook, due to economic recession, global LED display market experienced limited growth and market demand of traditional display decreased. However, thanks to the development of LED fine pitch display in recent years, display market demand increased again. In 2017, global LED display market scale reached USD 5.092 billion. Indoor fine pitch display (≤P2.5) will continuously maintain growth after experiencing rapid development in the past few years, and the market scale in 2017 was USD 1.141 billion with CAGR of 2017-2021 is expected to reach 12%.

Electronic & Optoelectronic System Research Lab under ITRI attempts to build a Micro LED pilot line which will start operating in 3Q18 at the earliest and offer products to Taiwan-based VR companies. 

2017 Micro LED International Symposium, organized by the Consortium for Intelligent Micro-assembly System (CIMS), is held today (November 3) at Taipei Marriot Hotel to look into the value chain of Micro LED and discuss its business opportunities and connection with AR/VR devices in the era of artificial intelligence (AI).

Veeco Instruments completed a strategic initiative with ALLOS Semiconductors (ALLOS) to demonstrate 200mm GaN-on-Si wafers for Blue/Green microLED production.

According to the latest report from LEDinside, a division of the market research firm TrendForce, 4Q17 Micro LED Next Generation Display Industry Market Report- Micro/Mini LED in Automotive Display Market, the total passenger car display in 2017 was about 241 million sets and is predicted to total 624 million sets in 2025, CAGR of 2017-2025 is 13%. The growth driver comes from rising IoV penetration, new energy carand autonomous vehicles. Hence, interior automotive display usage volume significantly rose.

The ideal solution for microLED makers would be the availability of efficient nitride LEDs in both green and red. In this case, all RGB LEDs would be composed of the same material with the same behaviors and driving conditions. The challenge is to find one material capable of spanning the blue to red spectrum. 

OLED patent holder Samsung Electronics now also steps into the realm of Micro LED, reported the Investor. It is also looking to acquire PlayNitride, a Taiwan-based Micro LED developer in an attempt to offset the sluggish sales of its QLED TVs.

The first Micro LED product is Crystal LED Display that Sony showcased at CES 2012. Outwardly similar to a regular TV, it was an ultimate combination of the most state-of-the-art technologies back then. However, Sony, after its first success, had gone silent for quite a while until 2016.

2017-2018 is a pivotal period for the display industry. Companies are scrambling for new display technologies to bring better user experience with devices that sport them. Micro LED display technology is believed to combine the LED and display industries together to create a supply chain rolling out screen products more appealing, power-saving, and refined. This chain is even anticipated to replace a part of the current LCD chain worth USD 30-40 billion in the future (see here). The Korean Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) revealed two months ago a refined roll-transfer technology which enables a successful mass Micro LED transfer onto flexible target substrates.