France-based 3D GaN LED developer Aledia announced that it plans to establish a 140 million euros LED production fab in Champagnier, near Grenoble in France. The plan is to start LED production by 2022 - and by the company will also finalize its microdisplay production process and will start offering microLED microdisplays.
Aledia developed a microLED production process, based on a unique 3D architecture using GaN-on-silicon nanowires (branded as WireLED).
GaN-on-Si IP developer ALLOS Semiconductors announced it is collaborating with with Prof. Ohkawa and his team at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) to develop high efficiency nitride-based red LEDs on large diameter silicon substrates.
Prof. Ohkawa and team have developed an indium gallium nitride (InGaN)- based red LED stack with low forward voltage of less than 2.5 V and high efficiency by using local strain compensation and a modified MOCVD reactor design. ALLOS and the KAUST team will combine their unique technologies to handle strain and optimize crystal growth conditions for GaN-on-Si and red LEDs. To this end, the KAUST team will grow its red LED stack on top of ALLOS’ GaN-on-Si-buffer layers, which will be fine-tuned during the collaboration to optimize the performance of KAUST’s red LED stack.
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.
German-based GaN-on-Si developer ALLOS has applied its technology to large 300 mm epiwafers. ALLOS says that scaling up to 300 mm wafers enables higher production efficiencies and thus lower costs. ALLOS estimates that the higher area utilization alone accounts for a cost advantage of 40% compared to standard LED wafers. Standard 300 mm silicon line tools also offer higher production uniformity and yield.
ALLOS demonstrated the 300 mm scale-up using a reactor made by Veeco who announced selling the first 300 mm GaN reactor to a leading-edge semiconductor fab just some month ago and also showed 300 mm wafer data at CES. ALLOS reports a wavelength uniformity of consistently below 1 nm and "all other production requirements like bow of < 40 µm and SEMI-standard thickness of 725 µm". ALLOS says scaling to 300 mm shows how robust its GaN-On-Si technology is.
UK-based GaN-On-Si MicroLED microdisplay developer Plessey Semiconductor announced that it has entered into a partnership with microdisplay system developer Compound Photonics to co-develop a Full-HD (1920x1080) 0.26-inch microLED display solution. The two companies expect to start offering samples in mid-year 2020 (not clear if these will be monochrome or full-color).
For this display system, Plessey will bond its micro-LED array wafer on Compound Photonics' backplane silicon wafer. The display module itself will be based on Compound Photonics’ NOVA digital drive architecture with MIPI input.
UK-based GaN-On-Si MicroLED microdisplay developer Plessey Semiconductor announced that it has developed a 2.5-micron pitch display, improving on its previous 8-micron pitch display it has demonstrated in May 2019 at SID DisplayWeek.
The new display sports a 2000x2000 resolution and is a monochrome blue display. Plessey says that in early 2020 (during CES 2020, in fact) it will demonstrate a full RGB display on one wafer.
Shanghai-based Micro-LED microdisplay developer JBD unveiled its latest Micro-LED microdisplay prototypes. JBD's panels can achieve a high brightness of 2 million nits coupled with very high pixel density (5,000 PPI) on a monochrome green display.
JBD also demonstrated an even high pixel density display (10,000 PPI). JBD can currently produce either monochrome or dual-color (red and green) microdisplays, and is developing full-color ones.
In 2018, UK-based GaN-on-Si MicroLED developer Plessey Semiconductor announced a strategic partnership with Taiwan's s Jasper Display Corp (JDC). Under the partnership, Plessey will use JDC's silicon backplane to drive its monolithic micro-LED displays.
Today JDC and Plessey demonstrated the world's first GaN-on-Silicon monolithic full-HD (1920x1080) microLED bonded display. Plessey says that it has succeeded in wafer level bonding of its GaN-on-Silicon monolithic microLED wafers with JDC’s eSP70 silicon patented backplane technology, resulting in microLED displays that contain addressable LEDs. The pixel pitch of this display is 8 microns and the JDC backplane provides independent 10-bit single color control of each pixel.