On June 30, Leyard held a Micro LED product launch event, during which it unveiled the latest Black Diamond product line engineered with the company’s revolutionary technologies. As the Micro LED market is expanding rapidly, Leyard, instead of following the price war trend, has developed a lineup comprising comprehensive indoor fine-pitch configurations from P0.4 to P1.8.

Li Jun, Chairman of Leyard

Overcoming Itself, Leyard Presents the Best of Micro LED Products

In the product launch, Li Jun, chairman of Leyard, indicated that Micro LED is mostly applied to fine-pitch products with a small pixel pitch (≤P0.9), hence its limited applications. To expand new applications, Leyard developed the Black Diamond Micro LED TVs, demonstrating the LED maker’s efforts in extending the novel display technology to ≥P0.9 fine-pitch products. At this point, Leyard has developed Micro LED products covering 80% of fine-pitch display configurations.

The Black Diamond technology features low power consumption and high stability, brightness, contrast and uniformity. In addition to its compatibility with the majority of fine-pitch products, the technology helps Leyard enter the consumer market, laying solid technological and cost foundations.

Facing the billion-dollar sized consumer market, Leyard shows its sincerity in the price. The lowest cost of a Black Diamond 4K Micro LED TV which is >100 inches in size is less than RMB500,000 ($74,600), signifying a further decrease in Micro LED TV cost as well as Leyard’s breakthrough and strategic development in the Micro LED sector.

Leyard Starts New Micro LED Application Trends with Industry-Leading Technologies

The product launch event exemplified Leyard’s endeavor in Micro LED investments and strategic development over the past 3 years. The event will also be a turning point where the company begins developing new applications in the coming 3 years.

Over the past 3 years, Leyard—embracing the vision of “Devotion to Display Technologies for Steady Growth”—has explored and overcome various Micro LED technical challenges through independent research and development and partnerships with upstream–downstream enterprises. The firm is among the first to achieve Micro LED development, mass production and commercialization.

The LED company has constantly made breakthroughs in critical Micro LED processes such as mass transfer, surface treatment and optical and driver chip-making, enabling cost reduction and development of proprietary solutions.

Leyard partnered with Epistar to establish a joint venture LEADSTAR Micro-Crystal Display Corporation to build Mini/Micro LED mass production plants. Currently, the production capacity has reached 800KK/month and is likely to hit 1600KK/month in 2023. As for product development, Leyard launched products with a pixel pitch of P0.4–P1.8 to create a comprehensive lineup for commercial display applications.

To enter the consumer market, Leyard created the consumer-oriented brand Planar in 2019, which released a modularized large Micro LED TV series, the GREAT SPACE, in 2021. Today, the announcement of the Black Diamonds marks another milestone for Leyard in the consumer market and foretells the application of Micro LED to general displays.

Promoting Micro LED to a wider range of applications has long been a vision shared by Leyard and other LED display businesses. Leyard knows clearly that whether Micro LED can take off depends on technological advances and exploration, which it has been striving for. With such fruitful results, the LED manufacturer will continue expanding Micro LED applications while sticking to the said vision.

In 2022, Leyard positioned its development focus on “technological advances, industrial strategies, application expansion”. Specifically, to achieve technological advances, the company will continue investing in Micro LED technologies through independent R&D, cooperation, equity investments and many other approaches, aiming to lead the development of display technologies and innovations worldwide.

Micro LED Applications Enter a New Stage for the Coming Semiconductor Era

The existing display technologies, like LCD, OLED and Mini LED, had spent a long time before becoming mature following technological advances with proprietary applications in business and consumer markets. Micro LED—regarded as the ultimate display technology—is also undergoing the same process.

Leyard holds that the development of Micro LED applications will go through three phases. In the first two phases, the commercial display sector will be the focus. In the third phase, the use of Micro LED will be extended to large home displays, AR/VR headsets, automotive displays and other products requiring high resolution and reliability. The new technology will also become suitable for pricey consumer electronics including smartphones and tablets.

Releasing the Black Diamond series will allow Leyard to expand its business in the large-size Micro LED display market and prompt Micro LED to enter the third development phase. Further, the Black Diamond will enable the company to enter the consumer market with large-size Micro LED displays exploring new applications.

In addition to the focus on commercial displays and consumer TVs, Leyard has been promoting Micro LED applications for smaller devices like VR glasses and vehicle mount displays so as to unlock the potential of this next-gen technology. The LED maker has invested various resources in the small display segment and established partnerships with VR device and car makers, aiming to devise a technological roadmap for Micro LED in small-size display applications.

During the event, Lu Changjun, VP of Leyard and director of the Intelligent Display Institute, revealed the company’s latest technologies demonstrating breakthroughs and improvement in mass transfer process, the initial development of QD LED displays and endeavor to design glass-based display production process. Its joint venture LEADSTAR, on the other hand, has been developing and applying semiconductor-grade packaging technologies, jointly entering the semiconductor era.

As general manager of LEADSTAR Huang Liyuan said, after shipping its Micro LED PCB-based products in 2021, the joint venture expects delivery of Micro LED semiconductor-grade packages this year. In 2023, it plans to work with partners specializing in LED chip-making, substrates, glass substrates and testing and repair equipment, aiming to ship AM Micro LED products engineered with the COB process.

Despite having a long way to go, Leyard believes that with joint efforts made by the entire LED supply chain, Micro LED will mature and become more cost-effective. Its innovative breakthroughs will eventually pave the way for new Micro LED applications. (By Irving from LEDinside)