MANCHESTER, England, May 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- SmartKem, Inc. (OTCQB: SMTK), a company seeking to reshape the world of electronics with its disruptive organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) that have the potential to drive the next generation of displays, is a gold sponsor of this year's Business Conference at Display Week 2023 taking place in Los Angeles, USA. SmartKem Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ian Jenks, will be giving the keynote speech on Wednesday, May 24th at 9:40am PT.

DATE: Wednesday, May 24th, 2023
TIME: 9:40am PT
LOCATION: Los Angeles Convention Center

Ian Jenks will be giving an in-person keynote speech titled 'The Next Generation of MicroLED Displays' as part of the Business Conference segment of Display Week. SmartKem recently announced that, together with its development partner, it has created the first monolithic microLED display using its high performance organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) technology. The novel display was created by printing an OTFT backplane directly on top of Gallium Nitride LEDs. SmartKem believes that this unique process has the potential to lower the cost and accelerate the commercialization of microLED displays. Consumer electronics companies are actively developing microLED displays which promise higher brightness, lower power consumption and longer lifetime. MicroLEDs are particularly important for portable powered displays such as smartwatches and AR/VR displays which cannot accommodate large batteries.

Existing methods of creating microLED displays use physical transfer of LEDs from the wafer upon which they are manufactured to a separate TFT display backplane, where they must be laser welded to the contact pad of the transistor to make an electrical connection. Because high resolution displays require the transfer of millions of tiny LEDs, this process carries a significant risk of placement error. Even if a 99.9% placement yield is achieved, a full HD colour display will have over 6,000 faulty sub-pixel LEDs that would need to be identified, removed, and re-attached.

SmartKem's patented core chemistry enables its semiconductor inks to be processed at 80°C, a significantly lower temperature than other existing methods. These lower temperature inks can be printed directly on top of the microLEDs which would be damaged at the higher temperatures used by other existing methods. This eliminates the mass transfer and laser welding processes, and the placement error described above. Importantly, existing low-cost manufacturing tools currently used for LCD backplane manufacturing can be used for OTFT fabrication.

Attend the Business Conference on Wednesday, May 24th, to hear more about SmartKem's unique TRUFLEX® materials and its ability to deliver the next generation of displays.


About SmartKem
SmartKem is seeking to reshape the world of electronics with its disruptive organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) that have the potential to drive the next generation of displays. SmartKem's patented TRUFLEX® semiconductor and dielectric inks, or liquid electronic polymers, are used to make a new type of transistor that could potentially revolutionize the display industry. SmartKem's inks enable low temperature printing processes that are compatible with existing manufacturing infrastructure to deliver low-cost displays that outperform existing models. The company's electronic polymer platform can be used in a number of display technologies including microLED, miniLED and AMOLED displays for next generation televisions, laptops, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets, smartwatches and smartphones.

SmartKem develops its materials at its research and development facility in Manchester, UK, its semiconductor manufacturing processes at the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) at Sedgefield, UK and retains a field application office in Taiwan. The company has an extensive IP portfolio including 125 granted patents across 19 patent families and 40 codified trade secrets.

 

TrendForce 2022 Micro LED Self-Emissive Display Trends and Analysis on Supplier's Strategies
Release date: 31 May 2022 / 30 November 2022
Format: PDF
Languages: Tradional Chinese / English
Pages : 130–150 in total (subject to change)