MicroLED vs OLED - Page 5

In May 2019 PMOLED display maker RiTDisplay announced a strategic partnership and share swap with MicroLED developer PlayNitride, and RiT later said it aims to release its first product to the market in 2020.

RiT announced today that its revenues for the year (to date) were $47.1 million USD - a decrease of 32.4% compared to last year. The company's CEO says that its PMOLED sales has been affected by e-cigarette bans in the US, and the company is now shifting its focus to develop micro LED displays (and also mini-LED ones).

The local government of China's Guangzhou province announced that it now offers large subsidies (up to $285 million USD per company) to encourage emerging technology production in the province.

The government announced a list of emerging display technologies - which include OLEDs, quantum dot displays, e-paper displays, graphene enhanced display technologies - and microLED displays.

Taiwan-based microLED developer Mikro Mesa announced that it achieved a breakthrough in its microLED transfer and bond process, which now enables the company to transfer 2-5 um microLED chips using a large 4-inch stamp.

Mikro Mesa's new process can transfer color (RGB) vertically-structured microLED chips and create a full-color display. It can be used to create high-density dipslays - up to 1,800 PPI and be used to create large microLED TVs, over 55-inch in size. The new process is a low temperature one (below 200 degrees Celsius) and can be used on flexible substrates - and be also used to create transparent displays.

AU Optronics announced that it will demonstrate a 12.1" LTPS micro-LED display prototype next week that features a resolution of 1920x720 (169 PPI). It seems that this is the same display shown at IFA 2018.

The 2018 display used blue LEDs with color conversion, which achieved "marvelous color performance", according to AUO.

Taiwan-based PMOLED display maker RiT Display announced a strategic partnership and share swap with MicroLED developer PlayNitride. RiTDisplay will have access to PlayNitride's technology and will be able to produce and sell micro-LED panels.

According to the Taipei times, RiTDisplay aims to produce small displays for wearable applications. The article says the display size will be around 3-inch, which actually sounds rather large for wearables.

The Society of Information Display (SID) revealed its 2019 display industry award winners, and interestingly two out of the three Display Of The Year Awards went to Micro-LED displays.

First up we have Samsung's modular The Wall display, made up of tiled and seamless micro-LED modules. The Wall was unveiled in January 2018 in a 146-inch installation. The Wall was officially launched in June 2018 when Samsung started to accept pre-orders, aiming to find customers in lobbies, museums, galleries, and retail spaces. It is estimated that the price of the 146" model is around $100,000. The Wall Professional features HDR 10+ and a peak brightness of 2,000 nits.

Taiwan-based Foxconn is building a display production fab in Wisconsin, USA. Announced in 2017, the fab changed its designation a few times (from LCD display panel production, to R&D and finally to LCD module production).

Foxconn now announced that it may also add OLED and Micro-LED production lines in the Wisconsin factory. It did not disclose any more details or timeline, this is certainly not a commitment yet, it's not even clear if the plan is to produce MicroLED panels or assemble modules.

Fuji Chimera Research Institute says that the global microdisplay market reached $161 million in 2018, led by LCoS panels (59.7%) and OLED panels (27.8%).

While some analysts expect Micro-LED to take over the AR microdisplay market, Fuji Chimera says that the technology is not mature enough and there are some technology challenges to overcome still - including those in epitaxial wafer process, mass transfer, defect detection and current drive.

Market research firm Yole Développement has been following the Micro-LED market for some years with some very interesting insights and forecasts.

Yole's technology & market analyst Zine Bouhamri was kind enough to discuss Yole's Micro-LED views with us. Mr. Zine is is a member of the Photonics, Sensing & Display division at Yole and he's deeply involved in the business development of the Displays unit activities.

HDTVTest posted an interesting interview with Cadmium-Free QD developer Nanosys CEO and president Jason Hartlove. In this long interview Jason discusses the company's technology and recent achievements.

Jason explains that producing an RGB Micro-LED has many challenges as each color micro-LED chip is different - and different color LEDs need slightly different voltages and drive currents. The mechanical placement of these chips is also much more difficult for three colors. Using single-color (blue) Micro-LED chips and color-converting them using QDs makes a lot of sense for such displays - with easier manufacturing, longer lifetime, less differential aging (burn-in) and a wider color gamut.