LEDinside’s annual event, Micro LEDforum, has again gathered many experts in the industry and academia to share about their technological expertise and provide penetrating insights of products and applications in the current Micro LED landscape. The event started with Roger Chu, Research Director of LEDinside, delved into the development of the panel industry. He pointed out that panel production has outpaced market demand, causing furious competition and pushing manufacturers to focus on developing new display technology or improving the functionalities of the...

LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, holds the annual pivotal conference, Micro LEDforum 2019: Key Technology and Application Market, yesterday (July 2nd) at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Invited were Rohinni, TORAY, Konica Minolta, PARC, Plessey, Kyung Hee University, Macroblock, Ultra Display, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and other leading manufacturers and experts at home and abroad to give penetrating analyses into the breakthroughs, applications and business opportunities o...

Congratulations Macroblock on 20th anniversary! Our 20th anniversary is an opportunity to honor to celebrate and look ahead to what's next. We celebrated our 20th anniversary with a grand event addressing the future of micro-LED technology development and highlighting its contribution as a key to the next five years. This event is held on 27th of June at Shangri-La's Far Eastern Plaza Hotel in Taipei and offering full-day sessions. "In honor of celebrating Macroblock 20th anniversary, we hold this forum for ‘Next Five Years of LED Display Techn...

Micro LED technology is on its way of business transforming! Since last year, we have seen different Micro LED display products in various trade shows from worldwide companies. Although Micro LED technology is still fraught with myriad challenges, it has become much more developed than it was two years ago. Schedules for the commercialization of Micro LEDs will unfold as the technology matures, predicted to bring Micro LED market revenue up to US$4.2 billion by 2023. This year, LEDinside Micro LEDforum 2019 has invited professionals across the world to sha...

Continental, the German automotive manufacturing company, announced its collaboration with Leia, a Silicon Velley company for developing light-field automotive displays to show 3D information around vehicles. Through the partnership, Continental aims to develop a new light-field cockpit solution, the Natural 3D Lightfield Instrument Cluster, which, according to the company, is an evolutionary step in the design of the human-machine interaction within automotive vehicles. (Image: Continental) According to Continental and Leia, the concept of the new light-field solu...

A research team from Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University developed a novel spray synthesis technique to fabricate multi-color Perovskite quantum dots with excellent emission properties which can enhance Micro LED display production. The research was published in Advanced Materials in 2017. (Image: Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan) Perovskite quantum dots (PQDs) are one of the most exciting research topics recently because of their excellent photophysical properties and low cost fabrication. However, the PQDs which were synthesized by inje...

After lots of talking about visible lighting communication, or LiFi (Light Fidelity), Signify announced the launch of Trulifi, a new range of LiFi systems. The world’s largest lighting company also reported two new customers of the systems. According to Signify, the LiFi systems, branded Trulifi, leverage existing and future professional luminaires for fast and reliable data transmission. Trulifi uses optical wireless transceiver technology built, or retrofitted, into Philips luminaires. Customers can use their current lighting infrastructure to power wireless conn...

China LED company Shineon presented its Micro LED display at GILE 2019 with its new brand “IconiView” targeting high-end display products. The 139-inch 4K Micro LED display was developed by Shineon and Lumens, using Flip-Chip-on-Module (COM) technology with a pixel density of 1,570,900 pixel/m2. The display achieved a contrast ratio of 3000:1 and its brightness is over 2000nit. According to Shineon, the product has been verified and can be mass produced. Shineon said it has been developing laser-lift-off thin-film LED technology which i...

Micro LED and Mini LED products are going to be the spot lights at this year’s Touch Taiwan, the Taiwan-based display show which will take place in Taipei, Taiwan during August 28 to 30. Micro LED is regarded the next generation display technology with its excellent performance including high brightness, high contrast, low power consumption and long lifetime which suppress OLED. Despite that several manufacturing barriers have slow down the commercialization process of Micro LED, worldwide technology developers have teamed up to leverage their expertise in...

Using LED as a light source, researchers at Osaka University have now developed a convenient light-driven process for oxidizing polypropylene (PP) without harmful waste. The research team used radicals to make the plastic react. Scholars chose an LED lamp as the light source photo-chemically activate radicals for breaking down the chemical bonds which make plastic unreactive and hard to decompose. "In applications like printing and medical materials, plastics must be surface-modified," explained Tsuyoshi Inoue, co-author of the study. "Oxidizing C-H bo...

Plessey, the UK-based semiconductor technology provider, has successfully developed GaN-on-Si monolithic Micro LED. According to the company, the innovative development will support next generation applications such as AR headsets, head-up displays (HUD) and other smart wearables to enter the mass market. Given their high contrast, high speed, wide viewing angle, high brightness and more efficient and longer-lasting operation, Micro LEDs are perfect for display applications on wearables such as smart watches, HUDs and AR headsets. (Image: Plessey) Howeve...

In the manufacturing process of Micro LED display, inspection and repair technologies are indispensable to enhance and assure production yield. But again, given the massive amount of Micro LED chips in tiny size, Micro LED display makers face a great challenge for the testing and repairing process. LED testing includes photoluminescence (PL) and electroluminescence (EL) test, the former method can test LED chips without touching and ruining them but it might not detect all the defects compared to EL test. On the contrary, EL test is able to identify more defec...

An emerging landscape bereft of standards, some have defined Micro LEDs as anything where the LED semiconductor die is smaller than 70 μm down to perhaps 1μm. Larger die are typically called Mini LEDs, used in applications such as local dimming. The semiconductor die are essentially a miniature version of the die in the well-known, commoditized solid-state lighting (SSL LED) industry. Besides physical dimensions, there are some subtle differences between the SSL industry and the display industry. Spectral tuning notwithstanding, the end goal for SSL industry...

In order to commercialized Micro LED display, the current goal of Micro LED technology developers is to reduce production cost and improve yield through optimizing manufacture process. One obstruction to the goal comes from the production process of mass transferring and bonding, as assembling million Micro LED chips to targeted substrates poses a great challenge for display makers. Micro LED display is made from Micro LED array consisting of a massive amount of Micro LED chips, forming individual pixels. Since the size of Micro LED chips is less than 100 &m...

Mojo Vision, a California-based startup focusing on invisible computing, revealed it Micro LED display featuring 14,000 PPI, which the company claimed to be the smallest and densest dynamic display ever made. The display sized only 0.48mm, same as a grain of sand but it can deliver a pixel density 300 times greater than current smartphone displays. The prototype technology uses Micro LEDs and is expected to be applied in wearable devices including AR/VR hardware and heads up displays (HUDs). (Image: Mojo Vision) According to Mojo Vision, the new monoc...

LED lighting could help to improve brain activity including memory and cognitive function, according to the research by a professor of bioengineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. Hanli Liu and Jacek Dmochowski, the assistant professor of bioengineering at City University of New York, are working on using a light-based technology to increase the energy available to brain cells and improve astronaut performance with an $800,000 NASA grant. Liu researches how to use lasers to deliver near-infrared light to the human brain to detect traumatic brain injurie...

glō, the Swedish-American Micro LED company, has been progressing its Micro LED technology since it exhibited the world’s brightest Micro LED display with JDC at Display Week 2018. In 2019, the company showcased four prototypes of Micro LED display including smartwatch display, AR display, HUD and a smartphone-sized panel with Kyocera during Display Week. (Image:glō) The solution of glō features two technology, RGB InGaN Micro LED and direct wafer transfer onto different substrate materials including silicon (CMOS), glass (LTO...

During Display Week 2019, LEDinside noted that Chinese LED makers and panel producers become strong industry players in Micro LED technology developments. The country was also ranked the second in the world with its Micro LED patent application, according to the statistics of the Korean Intellectual Property Office. The National Intellectual Property Administration of China published a patent applied by BOE which focuses on Micro LED transferring. In the patent application, BOE proposed a mass transfer solution with high efficiency in which a magneti...

In the latest report of LEDinside, titled “LEDinside 2019 Micro LED Next Generation Display Key Technology Report,” Micro LED technology not only features excellent performance in brightness and contrast that surpass OLED, its fast response time, low power consumption and reliability make it a perfect option for mobile and automotive applications. However, complicated production process which leads to low yield and high production cost has slowed down the commercial progress of Micro LED display. One of the challenges lies in the quality of Micr...

RaonTech, a Korean company who provides micro-display solution for AR/VR devices, announced its development of a 0.37-inch micro display with full HD (1920*1080) resolution based on LCoS technology. The display targets the rising market of wearable devices including head mounted display (HMD) and head-up display (HUD). (Image: RaonTech) According to RaonTech, the micro-display is consisted of liquid crystal and a special mirror on silicon wafer and driven by an RGB LED. Through the special mirror, the LED can increase pixel density of the small size d...

LED lighting installed on supermarket shelves is killing the reducing key nutrients in milk and shortening its shelf life, according to a new report by researchers from Newcastle University. The report, titled “Milk: Light exposure and depletion of key nutrients,” shows that high-intensity lighting, such as that found in supermarket dairy cabinets, damages nutrition value of milk by degrading essential nutrients such as Vitamin A, Vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and Vitamin D. Researchers found that milk begins to lose vitamin A after two hours of exposure to LED...

Despite that more and more industry players across the world have built partnership and poured resources into Micro LED development and research, the commercialization of the next generation display technology is still delaying. Due to technology barriers and equipment limitation, production cost for Micro LED display remains sky high, leading to postponed timeline of Micro LED display commercialization. But why is the manufacture of Micro LED display so difficult? What are the challenges occurred during Micro LED production that slow down the commercial progress? ...

Patently Apple reported that the US Patent and Trademark Office have published several new patents for Apple recently including two patents of Micro LED chip transferring and structure and one related to a head-mounted system with a holographic element. The first patent of Micro LED transferring, titled Micro LED Display, described a Micro LED structure with a metallization layer between a bonding layer and the micro p-n diode, as well as a conformal dieletric barrier layer. The structure of Micro LED enables a phase change during chip transferring and enabl...

Scientists warned that intensive exposure of blue light through heavy usage of electronical devices such as mobile phones and tablets might affect sleeping quality. A new study showed that by limiting or blocking evening exposure to light-emitting screen for one week, sleep quality for teenagers can be improved. The collaborative study by the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience, the Amsterdam UMC and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment indicates that by simply limiting exposure to blue-light emitting devices in the evening, adolescents can ...

In 2017, MIT researchers developed light-emitting plants by infusing nanoparticles into plants. With the technology, scientists hope to create a greener solution for lighting which electricity will no longer be necessary. The idea then led to an interdisciplinary collaboration between an MIT architecture professor and a professor of chemical engineering. Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, and his team implanted an enzyme that turns the plants’ stored energy into light, making plants glow like how fireflies do. Based on ...

Starting today on May 21, LIGHTFAIR International (LFI) 2019 is taking place in Philadelphia this year. Leading LED and lighting companies across the world including Cree Lighting, Current by GE, Osram and more are presenting their latest lighting technology and innovative products at the event. Connected lighting, human centric lighting and architecture lighting are focuses of the international firms. Cree Lighting, now fully owned by Ideal Industries, will showcase its new product portfolio for indoor, outdoor and intelligent lighting at LFI 2019. Fo...

French research institute, Leti of CEA Tech, announced a new technology development based on CMOS for GaN Micro LED displays manufacture. Researchers said the new process is capable of producing high performance Micro LED displays for a wide range of applications from smart watches to TVs. The approach fabricates elementary units of all-in-one red, green, blue (RGB) Micro LEDs on a CMOS driving circuit, and transfers the devices to a simple receiving substrate. The units are fabricated with a full semiconductor, wafer-scale approach. (Image: CEA...

Plessey announced that it has achieved a significant milestone in the development of its monolithic Micro LED displays with its backplane partner, Jasper Display Corp (JDC). The two companies announced their strategic partnership in September 2018. Though intensive collaboration, Plessey has succeeded in wafer level bonding of its GaN-on-Silicon monolithic Micro LED wafers with JDC’s eSP70 silicon patented backplane technology, resulting in Micro LED displays that contain addressable LEDs. Wafer level bonding poses significant technical challenges ...

Rumors about when Apple will start adopting Micro LED in its products have been going on since it acquired Micro LED startup LuxVue in 2014. Many believed that Apple Watch would be the first Apple product using Micro LED display featuring its high brightness and low power consumption. However, it is also likely that the technology will be seen in augmented reality (AR) devices based on Apple’s recent plans. Reuters reported that Apple has teamed up with German software developer SAP to help business develop applications based on Apple’s machine-l...

Micro LED technology startup VueReal reported that it has developed a solution to offer required yield for high-volume production of Micro LED displays. Right after unveiling its ability to produce Micro LED display with 30,000 ppi with product sample available for order, VueReal announced its development of a Micro LED display mass production solution. Low transfer yield and the need for expensive redundancy or repair solutions have been major limiting factors preventing Micro LED displays from being used in mainstream applications. In order to tackle the issue...