October 2023

ams Osram is progressing with its microLED production fab project in Kulim, Malaysia, and the company has now signed a sale-and-lease agreement with three local Malaysian funds, with a total sum of 2 billion RM (or about $420 million USD). 

ams Osram will sell its Kulim facility (The building itself) to Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB), the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Retirement Fund (KWAP), and will lease it back for at least 10 years. The deal is expected to be formally signed by December 2023.

TCL's RayNeo announced a new smart glasses product, the RayNeo X2 Lite, based on full-color 1500-nits microLED microdisplays. The company did not provide more details on the microLED displays, beyond saying that they will offer 3D images and a 30-degrees FOV.

The X2 Lite, powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 Platform offer innovative AI-backed live translation, smart assistant, 3D navigation, and HD camera features. TCL expects to ship the product in Q3 2024.

France-based Hummink develops high percussion capillary printing technology, that enables a highly controlled and prices (sub-micron scale) deposition of materials. The company's VP Business Development, Dr. Frederic Raynal, will give a lecture at the upcoming MicroLED-Connect virtual webinar on November 2023, and was kind enough to answer a few questions we had.

Hello Dr. Raynal. Can you give us a short intro to your company and microLED product/service?

Hummink is the leading developer and supplier of High Precision Capillary Printing (HPCAP), a revolutionary technology in many applications including the display and semiconductor industry. Spun-off from world-renowned research institutes, the company is based in Paris, with representatives in key regions (Korea, US, Taiwan, Japan, Europe). HPCAP involves the controlled deposition of materials, achieving high pixel densities with accurate alignment at extremely small sizes (sub-micronic scale), which is mandatory for the manufacturing of current and future generations of MicroLED. Hummink is a technology provider, enabling customers to have access to both equipments and inks through a single partnership.

North Carolina State University’s James B. Hunt Jr. Library installed a large curved Sony Crystal LED microLED display, to replace several video walls that were previously used.

The Sony microLED display was installed in a space known as the iPearl Immersion Theater. The display has a resolution of 4000 x 1620, and it’s approximately 6 x 2.5 meter in size. The display works as a digital exhibit space for student, faculty and community projects, so viewers will see student and faculty work, community project results, and special events information. 

MicroLED developer Mojo Vision announced that it has closed its Series A funding round, raising $43.5 million. In April 2023 the company announced the first trench of its Series A funding ($22.4 million), which means that the company now raised $21.1 million.

This round was led by long-time investors (New Enterprise Associates and Khosla Ventures) and new investors (Vanedge Capital) with participation from several investors including Shanda Grab Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, Advantech capital and Fusion Fund.

Singapore-based nsc innovation is an integrated circuit design company, that develops microLED microdisplays based on a monolithically integrated silicon CMOS with GaN LEDs platform, produced at full wafer scale. Kenneth Lee, nsc's co-founder, will give a lecture at the upcoming MicroLED-Connect virtual webinar on November 2023, and was kind enough to answer a few questions we had.

Hello Kenneth, can you give us a short introduction to nsc and your microLED technology?

nsc is an integrated circuit design company based out of Singapore. nsc aims to enhance the human experience through future technology by creating ground-breaking integrated circuits that will underpin future technological waves. 

Our chips are the first to effectively integrate silicon CMOS with GaN LEDs monolithically and at full wafer scale, while maintaining compatibility with traditional CMOS manufacturing. By doing so, nsc offers the functionality and manufacturability needed to enable widespread adoption of microdisplays.

France-based microLED developer Aledia has closed a new financing round, raising €120 million from existing investors. The company also appointed Pierre Laboisse as its CEO (Giorgio Anania, the previous CEO, remains on the company’s board of directors).

Aledia's investors include CEA Investissement, Supernova Invest, and the SPI and Ecotechnologies funds. In 2020 Aledia announced that it plans to establish a 140 million euros LED production fab in Champagnier, near Grenoble in France. The company already raised 110 million Euros towards that goal, and now it has raised another significant amount of money. In total, the company raised over €360 million to date.

The W Hotel in Taipei has an old Philips OLED installation (called You Fade to Light, designed by rAndom International creative studio). This beautiful piece consists of 2,000 modules, each lighting up as a response to people moving in front of it.

Due to the limited lifetime of the OLED devices, after years of use the installation started to fail and fade (which is rather ironic, given its name). PlayNitride collaborated with the hotel to replace the OLED panels with microLED powered panels. Each single module included over 14,000 microLEDs, and in total there was over 30 million microLEDs - 20% more than the number of microLEDs in a 4K display.

We're happy to interview DELO, as part of our series of interviews with MicroLED Industry Association members. DELO is a leading maker of high-tech adhesives and other multifunctional materials as well as corresponding dispensing and curing equipment.

DELO's hightech materials come to play for numerous of semiconductor, automotive and consumer electronics applications

Can you introduce your company and technology?

Dr. Tim Cloppenborg, senior project manager: DELO is a leading manufacturer of high-tech adhesives and other multifunctional materials as well as adhesive dispensing and curing technology. Our products are mainly used in the automotive, consumer electronics, and semiconductor industries. They can be found in almost every mobile phone and in most cars worldwide, for example in cameras, loudspeakers, electric motors, or sensors. DELO's headquarters are in Windach, Germany, near Munich, with subsidiaries in China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and USA, as well as representative offices and distributors in numerous other countries. We employ a workforce of 1,000 staff and achieved a turnover of almost €205 million in the last fiscal year. Our customers include Bosch, Huawei, Mercedes-Benz, Osram, Siemens, and Sony. As an innovative company, we always work ahead of the curve and pursue upcoming trends proactively. Regarding microLED applications, we are excited to provide adhesive research and expertise to our tech partners for the development of next generation displays, which will set a new standard for communication and visualization.

Avicena, a developer of microLED-based chip-to-chip interconnects, is showing the world's first 1Tbps microLED-based Transceiver IC in 16nm finFET CMOS. The company says that its microLED-based LightBundle interconnects offers much lower power and latency, higher bandwidth and lower cost compared to current solutions based on VCSELs or Silicon Photonics.

Avicena's LightBundle interconnect architecture is based on arrays of innovative GaN microLEDs that are integrated directly onto high performance CMOS ICs. Each microLED array is connected via a multi-core fiber cable to a matching array of CMOS-compatible PDs.