The microLED display technology is highly promising, as these displays offer increased brightness, efficiency and lifetime over the current LCD and OLED displays. However adoption of microLED displays in the major display markets is still years away. One display segment that could see adoption of microLED display sooner, is the transparent display sector.

Transparent displays are very interesting and have been researched for many years - and we have seen commercial adoption of transparent LCD, LED and OLED displays. These never achieved meaningful market success, but microLED developers hope that once microLED transparent displays are available this could change, thanks to the higher transparency and brightness offered by microLEDs compared to OLEDs and LCDs.

In recent years, we have seen many companies demonstrating transparent microLED prototypes, and even deploying some solution commercially. We will detail some of these recent advances below.

AUO is one of the microLED industry leaders. A few months ago during Display Week 2024, AUO showed several transparent microLEDs. First was its impressive 60" FHD (1920x0180) 60% transparent 600 nits tiled display, and the company also showed a smaller 30" 600 nits 960x540 (0.69 mm pixel pitch) touch transparent (60%) touch-enabled one.
 

A few months earlier, Lenovo showed a new prototype laptop device that uses a 17.3" 1000 nits (up to 3,000 nits peak brightness) transparent microLED display, produced by AUO. This is just a prototype at this stage, Lenovo says it has no plans to actually commercialize such a device. This 17.3" transparent display was developed together with ITRI, and and in 2022 AUO actually deployed a few of these displays in a ferry in Taiwan. In the past AUO also showed transparent microLED integrated into car windows.

In 2023, VueReal announced that it has developed and started shipping high-resolution and high-transparency microLED displays to its customers. Using the company's own MicroSolid Printing Platform, Vuereal integrates microLEDs into an active-matrix microLED display to enable high-efficiency and high quality displays with tunable transparency (from 80% to zero). VueReal offers a turnkey platform that enables its partners and customers to develop a custom display and fabricate it at VueReal's own pilot production line. VueReal says that it is now accepting new orders for high-resolution and high-transparency displays. VueReal, a MicroLED Association member, is one of the keynote speakers at MicroLED Connect 2024, where it will detail its technology and status - and will also exhibit its latest prototypes.

China-based Tianma is also developing transparent microLEDs. At Displayweek 2024, Tianma demonstrated an automotive transparent 8.07-inch octagon-shaped display aimed towards digital side mirror applications (to be placed inside the vehicle). The display offers a transparency of 55%, a resolution of 608x1204 (167 PPI) and a brightness of 1,500 nits.

Taiwan's PlayNitride is developing transparent displays as well, and in 2023 the company showed a 9.38" 960x480 (114 PPI) transparent microLED - with a transparency of 65%.

In January 2024, Samsung Electronics unveiled its first transparent microLED display prototype, showing how it compares to transparent OLEDs and LCDs - the advantages of the higher transparency was said to be impressive.

Several other companies have been showing transparent microLED prototypes as well - for example Taiwan-based Innolux with its displays based on blue LEDs with quantum dot color conversion, and LTPS backplanes on glass substrates, Sitan with its small transparent microLEDs, Lextar and others.

It seems as if display makers are ready to start offering transparent microLED displays - at least in low volume and for niche applications. It will be interesting to see whether microLEDs finally are able to unlock large markets for transparent displays - although even optimistically it will likely take years before any meaningful volumes can be produced and shipped.

TrendForce 2024 Micro LED Market Trend and Technology Cost Analysis
Release: 31 May / 30 November 2024
Language: Traditional Chinese / English
Format: PDF
Page: 160-180

TrendForce 2024 Global Automotive LED Market- Lighting and Display Product Trend
Release Date:
1. PDF (180 Pages)- 30 June 2024
2. EXCEL- 30 June 2024 and 31 December 2024
Languages: Traditional Chinese / English