Market research firm Omdia sees a strong growth in the microLED market in the future, led by demand from the smartwatch and TV markets. Omdia says 16 million MicroLED displays will ship in 2027 - over 10 smartwatch displays and 3.3 million TVs.
This is impressive growth, but even with such projected growth microLEDs will have limited penetration in the display market in 2027.
According to reports early in 2020, Samsung Electronics partnered with Epistar and PlayNitride that will enable Samsung to release its first true microLED TVs by the end of 2020. A new report from Korea suggests that Samsung is struggling with technology issues and it is not likely it will meet its goal of a product release in 2020.
The reports suggest that production yields are very low - apparently Epistar is not able to provide Samsung with the millions of microLEDs required to produce its TVs. Another major issues is Samsung's transfer process which is still not accurate enough - with the result being that display assembly yields are painfully low.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada developed a new transfer and bonding method to deposit a flexible microLED array on plastic substrates.
The technique, referred to as a "paste-and-cut", starts with bonding the LEDs on a process/handle wafer are temporarily bonded (pasted) onto a glass substrate and are then released (cut) to the flexible substrate. This approach allows the LED to be optimized and then combined with other materials.
German-based GaN-on-Si developer ALLOS announced that it has sold its high-power electronics and RF business to AZUR SPACE. ALLOS will now focus its business on the microLED display market.
ALLOS Semiconductors developed its GaN-on-Si epiwafer technology for both high power electronics and Micro LED applications, but the time has come to focus on one market. The company says its 200 and 300 mm epiwafer technology is crucial in meeting the uniformity, crystal quality and manufacturability requirements of the novel Micro LED display applications.
PlayNitride says that in order to meet mass production goals, microLED chip prices will have to be reduced drastically. The company aims to reduce the production cost of microLED chips by 95% within five years.
PlayNitride's CEO, Charles Li, says that the main challenge right now is to reduce the cost and size of microLED chips. In addition microLED makers will have to integrate the entire supply chain - from LED wafer production and process to transfer technology, backplane production and display module fabrication. Good technologies are available for all these steps, but integration is now key.
This is a sponsored article by Dr Xiaoxi He, Principal Analyst, IDTechEx
MicroLED, believed by many to be the next generation of display technology, has been pursued by players of LED, display, OEM, materials and so on. Differentiated from LCD and OLED, microLED is considered to be the only display technology that has no size limitation. What are the potential applications? What are the hypes and realities? These are questions addressed in the brand-new IDTechEx report, “Micro-LED Displays 2020-2030: Technology, Commercialization, Opportunity, Market and Players”.
Samsung Display has announced it is ending the LCD business and will focus on its QD LCD & OLED businesses. LG Display has halted its domestic production of LCD panels. Korean vendors tend to reduce their LCD panel production and shift to QLED & OLED. In addition, Panasonic and JDI are also getting out of the LCD business. AUO, Innolux and a few other Taiwanese companies are slowing down investment in LCD or OLED. As a comparison, LCD manufacturing is shifting to mainland China due to cost competence, new line production efficiency and industry chain support.
Epistar and Lextar announced plans to establish a joint holding company, effectively merging the two companies.
The plan is to delist both companies from Taiwan's stock exchange and list the new company by the end of October 2020. The two companies will continue to operate independently, but the holding company's main focus for its future revenue growth will be on mini LEDs and microLEDs products and technologies.
Helio Display Materials, based in the UK, was spun-off from both Oxford and Cambridge University, to commercialize photoluminescent and electroluminescent perovskite-based materials for the display industry - with solutions for the OLED, LCD and Micro-LED markets.
Our sister site, Perovskite-Info, posted an interview with Helio's CEO, Simon B. Jones, discussing the company's technology and business.
Samsung Electronics launched a new The Wall experience zone at the Galleria Department Store in Suwon, Korea. The company is showcasing a 146-inch microLED The Wall TV.
This is the first time Samsung is showcasing its microLED TVs to the public. The company said that it will expand this exhibition to other Galleria Department stores in Korea.
China-based MicroLED microdisplay developer Jade Bird Display announced a new 0.13" VGA microdisplay, which it says is the world's smallest microdisplay. This is a monochrome (red) display.
JBD did not yet share any details on this new display, but it says it will be launched by the end of 2020.