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Swedish-American GaN nanowire based micro LEDs developer glō ordered an AIX G5+ MOCVD platform from Aixtron to support the company's strategic expansion. The tool will be delivered with a 8x150 mm configuration by the end of 2017.
glō is commercializing micro-LED products based in its proprietary defect-free GaN nanowires technology. glō says that its technology enable the growth of mLEDs while maintaining the reliability of an inorganic material system.
PlayNitride's CEO, Charles Li, says that Micro-LED displays are not as challenging as originally expected, and the company now aims to start trial production of Micro-LED displays in the second half of 2017. The company has mass transfer and placement yield rates of over 99% in its lab.
In PlayNitride's R&D setup, it takes about 10 seconds to transfer and place 200,000 LEDs - which means that a 5" panel will take only 10 minutes to produce. However the cost for a single smartphone panel could reach about $300 - much higher than the cost of even the highest-end flexible OLED. Possible applications where Micro-LED displays could succeed commercially at this stage include smartwatches, VR / AR, automotive and transparent displays.
Japan-based Yano Research Institute estimates that following Sony's launch of its CLEDIS display, the Micro-LED market will finally emerge this year. Yano sees the micro-LED market growing from $7 million in 2017 through $14 million in 2018 and $224 million by 2020.
The fast growth will continue, and the micro-LED market wil reach $4.5 billion by 2025 - that's a total growth of over 65,000% from 2017 to 2025.
Taiwan-based PCB developer Unimicron has started to develop specific PCBs for Micro-LED displays, with aims to start mass producing such PCBs in 2019. According to LEDsInside, Unimicron will start a small batch production in 2018.
Unimicron is collaborating with Epistar's and ITRI's micro-LED display alliance, hoping that this will speed up the commercialization of its technology. LedsInside also reports that other Taiwan-based PCB makers aim to also start developing specific solutions for Micro-LED displays.
A few days ago Apple was awarded with 52 different patents, covering a wide range of technologies that include 3D glasses, in-air gesturing, fingerprint sensing and more.
One of these patents details a Micro-LED device that is able to both emit and sense light. We have seen similar solutions based on OLEDs - in that case the photo-diodes were placed between the OLED pixels, to create a micro-display that can sense light (possible applications are for example eye-tracking in a VR headset).
Digitimes posted an interesting interview with Epistar's president, Jou Ming-Jiunn. Jou says that the most optimistic sceneraio is for micro-LED displays to enter production by the end of 2018, with real devices appearing in 2019. There are still challenges ahead though, and Epistar's customers have not yet committed to anything.
According to Jou, there are two main routes to the market for Micro-LED makers: VR/AR or wearable displays and large-area TV panels. It is not clear yet which will route will arrive first.
Market research company TrendForce says Micro LED displays still face several challenges. Commercialization of LED displays with small pitch sizes, which TrendForce calls "Micro LED-like" displays are expected by 2018.
TrendForce defines Micro LED displays as displays with LED size smaller than 100 microns. There are still several challenges ahead - with a major one being the the mass transfer of micron-size LEDs to a display backplane. Companies are now aiming to commercialize 150 micron displays as early as next year, and then will follow to develop processes to support small LED sizes.
Researchers from Korea's Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) developed a new micro-LED manufacturing process based on a roll-to-roll transfer process. The researcher say that this kind of process may enable fast and reliable production.
The patented process is said to be much faster than conventional process, using an "ink-like" placement mechanism. The researchers say that in this process you can place more than 10,000 LEDs in a second - compared to about 1-10 LEDs per second in a conventional process.
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