Display Week is an iconic event for the display industry across the world. Micro LED display is still a major focus of the show in 2019. Most of the Micro LED display exhibitors have demonstrated their products last year and came with upgraded Micro LED display this year. LEDinside noticed that Chinese panel manufacturers have joined the game of Micro LED and showcased active driven solution on glass backplane, indicating the technology progress of Micro LED display. Let’s take a look at the latest Micro LED developments at SID Display Week 2019.

PlayNitride
PlayNitride is by no means one of the spotlighted companies at the show with its 7.65-inch full color transparent Micro LED display. The display adopted the solution of active driven LTPS backplane to achieve a resolution of 720*480, 114 PPI and a transparency of 60 percent. The excellent performance presented by the RGB full color display attracted numerous visitors during the show. PlayNitride also demonstrated a flexible Micro LED display and a wearable device with 468 dpi. The company booth was granted with SID award.

PlayNitride has raised a fund of US$ 52 million in April and teamed up with Taiwan-based OLED supplier Ritdisplay. The two companies cooperated through stock swap and the collaboration enables PlayNitride to access diverse backplane technologies while deepen its development in wearables.

ITRI
Taiwan’s ITRI exhibited Micro LED on PCB and PI and Mini LED on PCB, featuring the technology of mass transferring Micro LED and Mini LED chips to different backplanes. Due to lack of smoothness, mass transferring Micro LED on PCB backplane is considerably challenging. For example, Sony has to turn RGB Micro LED into a package for mass transferring Micro LED onto PCB backplane to produce its Crystal LED display.

The technology of ITRI is capable of solving the issue of direct transferring RGB Micro LED chips to PCB backplane in volume, which is believed to be critical for manufacturing efficiency enhancement and production cost management.

X-Display
X-Display is the subsidiary of Ireland-based Micro LED company, X-Celeprint. Established by in the end of 2018, X-Display focuses on Micro LED display production while X-Celeprint targets technology development. During Display Week 2019, X-Display invited investors and press to join its company event that demonstrate its products and technologies independently.

The exhibit, a 5.1-inch, 70 PPI Micro LED display panel, is similar to the one showcased last year. Adopting the company’s Micro IC with active driven solution, the display could be applied more diversely compared to the product demonstrated in 2018. With the high brightness of the Micro LED display, images can be projected on paper. X-Display also cooperated with different partners to produce a 30,000 nits Micro LED display.

Plessey
In collaboration with several strategic partners, Plessey showcased a Micro LED display for AR application. The 0.7-inch display was made by 8µm blue LED chips on JDC’s CMOS backplane to achieve a resolution of 1920*1080.

Plessey has upgraded its facilities and equipment recently with its fund closed in 2018. Equipped with new semiconductor-level clean rooms and automated facilities, Plessey produced the world first wafer to wafer bonding Micro LED display with Micro LED epitaxy wafer and silicon CMOS backplane.

As AR projection applications are targeted by several leading companies, Plessey has cooperated with technology partners including AIXTRON, JSC, Nanoco, VUZIX and others to enhance production facilities, demonstrating its capability of commercialization of Micro LED AR applications.

JBD
The team from JBD presented a 600 DPI bi-color Micro LED display which implanted JBD’s proprietary transferring technology to move red and green LEDs to silicon CMOS backplane. Also, JBD exhibited a mono-color Micro LED module with the same silicon CMOS backplane solution which achieves a pitch size of only 2.5µm and 10,000 DPI. Moreover, it achieves a brightness of a million nits and a resolution of 5000*4000. 

JBD noted that the requirements of DPI and brightness for AR application are very high, the company is targeting technology of ultra-resolution Micro LED incorporates silicon CMOS backplane. Currently JBD is capable of minimize pitch size to below 2.5µm, which surpasses the conventional DLP solution. The next step is to increase brightness and to achieve full color.

Tianma
Chinese panel maker Tianma exhibited an impressive 7.56-inch transparent full-color Micro LED display with its proprietary LTPS glass backplane and driver solutions, plus Micro LED technology from PlayNitride. The RGB full color display demonstrated an excellent color performance and won the award of People’s Choice of SID Display Week.

CSOT
Another panel maker from China, CSOT, also showcased full-color Micro LED display. The 3.5-inch transparent display adopted IGZO glass backplane with an active driven solution. Accoridng to CSOT, when panel size increases, the production cost of IGZO backplane will be more competitive than LTPS, so the company chose IGZO for its first Micro LED display. It also pointed out that low efficiency of red Micro LED due to its material characters is still a big problem; therefore, how to balance brightness and uniformity of full-color Micro LED display would be a challenge.

Author: Roger Chu/LEDinisde

LEDinside 2019 Micro LED Next Generation Display Key Technology Report
Release Date: January 31, 2019
Format: PDF
Language: Traditional Chinese / English
Pages: 219
Quarterly Update: Micro / Mini LED Market Perspective Analysis - Vendor Dynamics, New Technology Import, Display Week / Touch Taiwan Direct Strike (March, June, September 2019; Approx. 10-15 pages/quarter)