May 2023

During Display Week 2023, Tianma demonstrated its latest microLED display prototypes - all of which are transparent displays, stating that the main application for such displays is in the automotive sector.

The first display is a 8.75" panel, offering a resolution of 880x480 (114 PPI), a brightness of 800 nits and high transparency of over 70%. The display is an active-matrix microLED produced on an LTPS backplane.

During Display Week 2023, TCL CSoT showed a new microLED display prototype, a tiled 18.8" 960x540 display.

This is TCL's largest microLED shown to date, we believe. The display offers a pixel-pitch of 0.43 mm, an IGZO backplane and a peak brightness of 1200 nits. CSoT says that the LED chips have an area of 400 squm, which means chip size of about 20 microns.

AUO has demonstrated its latest microLED displays at Display Week 2023. Most of these displays have been shown before, but this was an impressive lineup for the Taiwanese display maker, and we'll detail the displays below.

So first up we have the 13.5" 1920x1080 (163 PPI) transparent microLEDs, which AUO says is the highest-resolution transparent microLED display ever demonstrated. The display offers a transparency of 55% and a high brightness of 5,000 nits. The microLEDs used in this display are 30 micron in size.

AR microLED microdisplay developer Mojo Vision announced that it has achieved a process milestone and has lit-up its first 300 mm GaN-on-Silicon blue microLED array wafer. The company says it is on track to maturing its 300 mm CMOS fab process.

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Mojo Vision is developing microdisplays based on blue LEDs and quantum dots color conversion. The company developed the world's highest density microLEDs, achieve up to 28,000 PPI (sub-micron LEDs).

Display Week 2023, the industry's premier event, is now over, and it was a great week. We had dozens of meetings and saw many next-generation display technologies. As we go over all materials, we will upload new stories to detail the displays on show.

During the conference, we also hosted the first annual MicroLED Industry Association meeting, and were happy to see almost 40 people attending the meeting, and staying for several hours - discussing their latest technologies and exchanging information and news.

Here are our key takeaways from this show:

XTPL and QustomDot have joined forces in a EU-supported consortium that aims to develop printed and flexible microLED displays (BAMBAM*). We are excited to announce that the two companies have tested a new generation of InP-based quantum dot (QD) inks that have the potential to revolutionize the field of microLED displays. The experiments showcase the excellent compatibility of QustomDot's unique red and green inks with XTPL’s state-of-the-art Delta Printing System.

QD inks deposited with unparalleled precision, accuracy and uniformity, as attested by a reproducibility of the deposited droplet diameter is 3,5 µm and its height below 300 nm – well within the requirements for microLED. Being able to do this on both hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces, our solution further highlights the versatility towards different integration flows. The prints are capable of satisfying the current demands for display printing and the prospective requirements for manufacturing microLEDs. The combined impact of XTPL’s printing system and QustomDot’s QD inks indicates that this technology is incredibly versatile, and presents exciting opportunities for expanding the use of QD-based ink printing on a larger scale. The results have been nothing short of spectacular!

NS Nanotech announced that its researchers from the University of Michigan, led by the company's co-founder Prof. Zetian Mi, has developed a native red sub-micron microLED device with an EQE of over 8%. The company says that this is the world's most efficient submicron-scale LED.

NS Nanotech has an exclusive license to commercialize prof. Zetian's LED technology and technologies developed at McGill University. The company grows unique nanowire LEDs using MBE technology.

Apple's microLED projects and goals have been reported and rumored many times in the past, and now the respected Nikkei Asia newspaper posted an interesting article with new details of Apple's microLED plans. Some parts of this plan were already published by other reporters, note.

According to the new report, Apple is aiming to get more involved in display manufacturing, to increase its control over its supply chain, and reduce its reliance on Samsung Display specifically. Apple has decided, therefore, to handle the LED transfer (pick-and-place) process by itself, at its R&D facilities in Longtan, Taoyuan, Taiwan. 

Germany-based QubeDot, developer and producer of microLEDs and microLED-solutions, will be hosting an online seminar as part of the SMILE EU project. The webinar will be held on June 13th, 14:00-15:30 PM (CEST).

The revolutionary microLED platform SMILE has been developed as part of an EU-funded project that relied on a collaboration between several outstanding partners from Europe. SMILE stands for “Structured Micro Illumination Light Engine” and will enable an enormous variety of novel applications in the future. With full scalability in terms of pixel numbers, fast switching speed of freely programmable optical patterns, high optical power, multiple wavelengths, and the possibility of mass production, SMILE is the next generation of lighting technology. SMILE technology is addressing quickly increasing markets and applications such as AR glasses, photonic sensors, image projection, chip- based holographic microscopy and several more.

US-based Q-Pixel announced that it has developed a 5000 PPI full-color microLED microdisplay, based on its proprietary Polychromatic microLED technology.

Q-Pixel's technology enables a single-pixel color-tunable microLED device. The displays are produced using a monolithic process. As the company is still in stealth-mode, we do not have more information, it will be interesting to know how this technology compares to Porotech's DPT color-tunable microLED technology.