Technical / research

The COVID-19 pandemic created an increased demand for high quality IT solutions, including monitors and collaborative tools, which prompted LCD and OLED display makers to develop new solutions for this market for applications like computer monitors, signage and more.

microLED displays (and also OLED displays) that are 20-inch or more will suffer from incompatibility with standard capacitive touch, because the thin microLED display panels result in large parasitic capacitive coupling with the touch surface. The dynamic driving of microLED (where only lit pixels draw current) further reduces the capacitive touch performance by introducing unpredictable “display pattern noise”. These issues are easily mitigated in small area displays, but as displays increase in size, the performance and costs of capacitive solutions suffer.

QustomDot and MICLEDI announced a joint  development program to develop color microLED microdisplays using QustomDot's color conversion technology. The companies will demonstrate a microdisplay that offers a new architecture tailored for high-efficiency color conversion using stable RoHS-compliant QD materials. The displays will be produced using a high-throughput QD transfer and patterning techniques on micron-sized pixels.

QustomDot developed a patented method to produce high-quality and stable QD materials suitable for microLEDs. MICLEDI is producing its microdisplays on 300 mm wafers, and the company developed a new pixel architecture that has been optimized for high-aperture (>60% aperture at a 3μm pixel pitch) which the company says is a key requisite to achieve a high brightness with quantum dots.

UK-based Kubos Semiconductors raised $605,000 to launch its cubic-GaN LED technology into new markets, such as microLED displays.

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Kubos says that its unique cubic-GaN technology can increase light output (and efficiency) of green LEDs. Kubos operates in a fabless model and says that its technology is fully compatible with standard LED development process on large wafers, offering lower cost volume production. Kubos is also looking to use the technology to produce red GaN LEDs.

LED display market Leyard Optoelectronics announced that it developed the world's first mass-produced microLED display that uses quantum dots color conversion technology. Leyard collaborated with Saphlux (of which it owns around 12%).

Leyard adopted Saphlux's NPQD R1 micro LED technology, and have completed the development and testing of the display technology, and now it can mass produce NPQD-powered displays.

Researchers from the Beijing Institute of Technology and MIIT have developed perovskite quantum dots microarrays with strong potential for quantum dots color conversion (QDCC) applications including micro-LEDs displays.

Perovskite quantum dots (PQDs) hold potential as an attractive material and can resolve some of the problems found in conventional QDCC. While perovskite quantum dots are relatively new, they have already been shown to have attractive properties that make them extremely suited for electronic and optoelectronic applications.

Porous-GaN material platform developer Porotech announced a new technology that it brands as DynamicPixelTuning that makes it possible to create full-color or tunable-color monochrome displays using identical pixels from a single wafer.

Porotech says that DynamicPixelTuning displays will offer high color uniformity without the use of complex fabrication processes. The technology is applicable for all microLED display types, from microdisplays to mobile displays to TV displays.

Researchers from the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) in Taiwan have found that by applying ALD Al₂O₃ passivation, it is possible to increase the external quantum efficiency of microLED chips.

The EQE of 5x5 um microLEDs was enhanced by 70%, and the EQE of 10x10 um chips was enhanced by 60%. The ALD passivation technology was also successfully used for the patterning of color-conversion QDs by inkjet printing (the passivation is used to prevent the quantum dots from photo-oxidation and degradation).

Researchers from Japan's Toyohashi University of Technology and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University have developed a flexible, multipoint microLED array film that can be flexibly attached to cover the brain and can illuminate specific brain regions.

The manipulation of neural activity by light (enabled by optogenetics), requires a thin, flexible and lightweight lighting source that is not toxic to living tissue. The new microLED film is highly suitable for this task, and the researchers hope that such devices will create a new area of neuroscience research aimed at comprehensively understanding the brain information that underpins how neural activity, behaviors, and disorders are linked.

Researchers from the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) have developed a stretchable microLED display, that can be stretched in both directions. The researchers say that the display can stretched by up to 25% without distortion to the image.

The researchers report that they have managed to successfully fabricate a 3" microLED display. This was achieved by using metamaterials with unique mechanical properties that do not exist in nature - mainly that if they are stretched in one direction, they also stretch in the perpendicular dimension, and so the display is not distorted. They term the display a 'metadisplay'.

Quantum Dots developer Nanosys announced a joint-development agreement with OTFT backplane developer SmartKem, to work on low-cost OTFT based microLED displays.

1.6-inch LTPS microLED prototype (glo)

The two companies will develop displays that utilize SmartKem's OTFT backplane and Nanosys' GaN microLED technology. Last year Nanosys acquired glo, which developed the microLED tech.