Native red

The MicroLED Industry Association will host an online meeting on June 16, 2025, with a focus on red microLED emission, one of the key challenges towards mass microLED adoption.

This first-of-its-kind panel meeting will take a deep look into red microLED emission. The several potential paths towards a commercial red microLED will be discussed: native GaN red, color conversion, color-tunable LEDs and 3D GaN Nanowires.

Plessey Semiconductors, together with Meta Platforms, announced that they have developed a native red microLED microdisplay that achieves up to 6 million nits with a chip size of 5 um. Plessey says that this is world's brightest microLED device at this size.

In March 2020, Meta signed a deal with Plessey to dedicate all of Plessey's microLED manufacturing operations to support Meta with its own product development. Facebook pretty much acquired Plessey's microLED operations with this exclusive deal. 

Researchers from France's CEA-Leti and CNRS institutes have succeeded in growing highly efficient red, green and blue InGaN submicron microLED nano-pyramids.

The researchers have deposited the nanopyramids by using an MOCVD-based technique, and using nanoselective area growth using an in-situ patterned graphene on SiC as a mask. The researchers report that these microLEDs offer high efficiency with the red microLED offering very regular quantum wells emitting at 620 nm with an In content up to 40%.

China-based MicroLED microdisplay developer Jade Bird Display have developed a full-color microLED microdisplay that achieves a brightness of 2 million nits (white-balanced).

JBD says that its Phoenix series RGB microdisplays offer a pixel pitch of 5 micron, an ultra-thin stack of less than 5 micron, native RGB emitters and high color fidelity. JBD hopes to commercialize its full color microdisplays in Q3 2025. 

Pyramidical GaN microLED developer Polar Light Technologies announced that it has managed to produce red (625 nm) microLEDs based on its non-etching bottom-up platform. The company now has demonstrated the production of red, green and blue pyramidal microLEDs using the same material compound. 

Red is the most challenging microLED emitter, and companies have been looking at several alternatives to native GaN red microLEDs, including 3D nanowires, color conversion, and color tunable LEDs.  Polar Light Technologies’ microLED is composed of pyramid shapes that are built with a novel bottom-up approach, a technology that the company says comes with unique benefits, including reduced strain in the lattice of the InGaN/GaN structure, a unique possibility of frontplane integration, no etching damage (and so higher efficiency), ability to produce small microLEDs, even sub-micron, a narrow emission cone and more. 

US-based Ingantec announced that it has entered into an exclusive patent licensing agreement with the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Under the agreement, Ingantec has acquired the exclusive rights to patents that cover innovative systems and methods for achieving industry-leading devices using Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) as well as other growth and fabrication processes.

Ingantec will use the technology developed at UCSB to produce highly-efficient next-generation microLED devices. The company is focused on developing efficient native GaN red devices.

UK-based Kubos Semiconductors announced that it has won a £700,000 (almost $900,000 USD) Future Economy Investor Partnerships (FEIP) grant from Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency. Kubos also updates that it has been granted its first process technology patents and has received its first customer order.

This FEIP grant is for a 24-month project to achieve 5% efficiency for red microLEDs by deploying the company’s proprietary cubic Gallium Nitride (GaN) process, called KubosLED.

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.