PlayNitride demonstrates its latest microLED display prototypes and technologies at SID Displayweek 2022.
At the entrance to PlayNitride's booth, you can see a long 132-inch tiled microLED display, made from 192 modules (each 5" in size). The 7680x1080 59PPI display is completely seamless and offers 3,000 nits and a 116% NTSC color gamut.
In December 2021, Visionox announced that it finished the construction of its MicroLED pilot line, which is the first full-process line built in China. The pilot line can produce complete displays, from driver backplane, through transfer process to full module production. The LED chips themselves are produced by a third party.
During Visionox's 2022 Technology Innovation Launch Event, the company announced that it has successfully built 1.84" wearable microLED display samples, in addition to glass-based 12.7" tiled display modules. Visionox did not reveal any more details about these new display samples.
MicroLED developer VueReal announced that it has raised $14.4 million in its latest (series B) funding round, led by Cycle Capital VC and joined by TDK, Vitro, Economic Development Canada and BDC Capital. VueReal says it will use the funds to enhance its production facility, expand the team, and gain new customers.
VueReal says that the new financing round will also enable it to offer a broader range of custom display products, for AR, smartwatches, smartphones, automotive, signage and transparent displays. Last year VueReal demonstrated high-brightness and high-transmittance transparent microLED displays which it is now offering to customers.
According to reports from Taiwan, PlayNitride is planning to IPO in 2022. PlayNitride started to sample micro-LED at the end of 2017, and in 2018 PlayNitride demonstrated its first Micro-LED prototypes. PlayNitride has a pilot production facility at Hsinchu Science Park. In 2020 PlayNitride started constructing a second production line that will start mass producing in H2 2021.
The company is also showcasing new microLED displays at Opto Taiwan 2021, which started today. The most interesting display is a 1.58" 256x256 Passive Matrix display. The company collaborated with Solomon Systech to develop the IC for this display. PlayNitride says that this display could be commercialization in 2022. PlayNitride have demonstrated PM-MicroLED displays before, together with RiTDisplay.
TCL's CSoT showed its latest display prototypes at the company's DTC 2021 event. CSoT unveiled two new microLED display prototypes, that it never displayed before.
The first display is a small 1.37" 320x360 (353 PPI) wearable LTPS microLED display, that achieves a brightness of >2,000 nits. The display also uses TDDI touch technology (in which a single chip shares the display driver and the touch sensor).
DSCC estimates that the MicroLED display market will grow to from $103 million in 2022 to $1 billion by 2026. MicroLED will be adopted by three major applications, TVs, Wearables and AR/VR devices.
DSCC sees MicroLED devices being chosen mostly due to the higher efficiency, brightness, response time - and the longer lifetime compared to OLED devices. The high cost of production remains a challenge, though.
TCL announced a new AR smartglasses product, which it calls the Thunderbird Smart Glasses Pioneer Edition. TCL did not reveal much, but it says the color display is based on microLED technology, with a pixel pitch of 4 um. TCL did not release any estimated shipping dates or a price for this new product, which is likely still at an early stage.
The video above is not clear, but it seems as if this solution uses three monochrome microdisplays, combined to show a single full-color image (the video shows one panel, but it later shows three monochrome images combined into one full-color display). This kind of solution was suggested by Vuzix, based on JBD's 0.13" VGA monochrome microdisplays. Which incidentally offer a pixel pitch of 4um, which leads us to speculate that TCL is also basing its Thunderbird glasses on JBD's displays.
Vuzix have officially launched its microLED display engines, based on three JBD monochrome microLED microdisplays.
Vuzix says that samples of the new engines are now available upon request. These are monochrome devices, and one would have to use three (red, green, and blue) for a full color display. Vuzix is developing full-color and higher-resolution (HD) engines. Vuzix says that its next-generation smart glasses will adopt these devices which are now on offer to customers.
MicroLED developer PlayNitride introduced interesting new display prototypes at SID Displayweek 2021.
The first display is a 89-inch 5K (59 PPI) curved display, produced from tiled microLED panels. The display has a 32:9 aspect ratio with the microLEDs driven by PCB. The 89-inch display is build from 168 tiles, and it achieves a brightness of over 2,000 nits.
AUO Optronics is showing its latest microLED ALED display prototypes at SID DisplayWeek 2021. Most of these aren't new display (AUO already demonstrated these last month) but it's the first time we got these on video:
You can see the 1.39" 472x472 (338 PPI) full-circle microLED display, developed together with PlayNitride. You can also see AUO's 12.1-inch 169PPI microLED display it first demonstrated in SID 2020, and the 9.4-inch 228 PPI flexible microLED prototype it also developed together with PlayNitride.
