The rumors of Apple using Micro LED in its Apple Watch continue. This time, it was said that the strategic appliance of Taiwan’s PlayNitride and RiTdisplay will provide their Micro LED technologies including chips and display modules for the Apple Watch, according to the report of Taiwan’s Economy Daily News. PlayNitride’s expertise is Micro LED technology has been recognized by worldwide partners. At SID 2019, PlayNitride showcased a 7.65-inch full color transparent Micro LED display, a flexible Micro LED display and a wearabl...

Micro LED technology moved steps forwards since 2019 with worldwide companies showcasing their Micro LED products at big trade shows. LEDinside has noted in “2019 Micro LED Next Generation Display Key Technology Report” that featured with high brightness, high contrast, high response time and power saving, Micro LED technology would suppress other display technology such as LCD and OLED. A wider range of applications including watches, mobile phones, automotive displays, AR/VR devices, monitors, TVs and large displays can also develop toward...

Smart glasses and AR devices have been targeted by Micro LED display technology and were considered to be the first applications entering the market. Previously LEDinside has collected news about Apple’s patent applications related to Micro LED and AR smart glasses. However, rumors said that Apple might have dropped its AR glasses project. Apple’s project of AR/VR headset development might have been suspended due to immature capability of building 5G connectivity and data, according to the report of Digitimes. The report said that the team was dis...

A research team led by a professor from Department of Optics and Photonics at Taiwan’s National Central University revealed a new production method for Micro LED epitaxy wafer. The team developed GaN thin film wafer under low temperature via an approach of high-energy physic. According to the researchers, the method would cost only one tenth of the current Micro LED production cost and could be applied for mass production. (Image:NCU) By combining data analysis and semiconductor manufacture process, the researchers aim to find innovative approaches for M...

Micro LED technology breakthroughs continue to progress in order to tackle challenges occurred in different manufacture process. At Micro LEDforum 2019, professionals in industry introduced their progresses of various technologies for a wide range of Micro LED applications. Yen-Hsiang Fang at Consortium for Intelligent Micro –assembly System (CIMS) of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) presented the developments of the organization. ITRI began to build up its full color Micro LED display technology since ...

With its expertise in Micro/Mini LED display and fine-pitch display, LED driver IC company Macroblock sees profit growth in 3Q19 despite that tepid Chinese Market. The increasing demands of fine-pitch LED display and Mini LED backlight display pushed Macroblock’s revenue for 2Q19. With orders for niche products, profit margin of the company may come to 35 percent. For Mini LED backlight, Macroblock has expanded the product portfolio from driver IC to module, providing holistic solutions for clients. New equipment will be installed in 3Q19 and prod...

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...

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...

The development of Micro LED display technology has further materialized in 2019 in the form of more solid applications presented in big trade shows. Micro LED products demonstrations marked the intensified collaboration between industry players in the supply chain across the world. Researchers, chip makers, panel producers, equipment providers and application device developers have intensified their cooperation to accelerate Micro LED technology progress.

Taiwan-based LED chip maker Epistar held its annual shareholder meeting on June 19, 2019. The company expects that Mini LED products will be the major driving momentum in 2019. Epistar continues to work on high margin LED products including UV LED, VCSEL, Mini LED and Micro LED. The company is working intensively with Mini LED projects and its products have been adopted in the end applications including monitors, notebooks and tablets. Epistar foresees an increase of product shipment with rising demands in the market 2020, which will push the produ...

The Foxconn Group has continued to accelerate Micro LED development by several subsidiaries including eLux, Inc. LEDinside had an opportunity to visit eLux and learn about the current progress of the Micro LED technology development. Before joining the Foxconn Group, Jong-Jan Lee (J.J. Lee), CEO of eLux and Paul Schuele, CTO of eLux, have both worked at Sharp Laboratories of America and established eLux to develop Micro LED technology. After being acquired by Foxconn, eLux has cooperated with other companies under the Foxconn Group and achieve...

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...

LEDinside, a division of TrendForce, points out that Apple has just released the Pro Display XDR 32-inch 6K display, which utilizes a brand new LED backlight solution. In doing so, Apple is motivating the display industry to actively explore new solutions for high end products, with next generation Mini LED backlight technology to become the main area of development for many suppliers. Mini LED backlight revenue is expected to reach US$340 million in 2023 (not including the revenue from other driver ICs and backplanes). TrendForce points out that the brand n...

Despite that the core of GILE is LED lighting and lighting related applications, LED producers who joined the event this year took the opportunity to present their latest development of Micro LED and Mini LED technologies. Micro LED Display Shineon from Beijing, China, showcased a 139-inch 4K Micro LED display at GILE 2019. The Micro LED display is spliced by 576 units of 96mm*96mm Micro LED display module which their pitch size is 0.8mm. Shineon and Lumens from South Korea have developed Micro LED display modules with pitch siz...

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...

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...

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...

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. ...

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...

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...

Smart glasses and AR technology provider Vuzix and optoelectronic technologies developer Plessey announced an exclusive display device design and long-term supply agreement. With the agreement, the two companies will work together on AR products development and productions combining Micro LED light source from Plessey and smart glasses expertise of Vuzix. Vuzix has developed a Smart Glasses portfolio including Vuzix Blade, which won the CES 2019 Innovation Award. The glasses are equipped with a smart display, offering a see-through viewing experience via its waveg...

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...