High-end led display panel manufacturers will take micro-LED as the main direction

The micro-led technology was created in 2000 by a team LED by HongxingJiang and JingyuLin, two professors from Texas tech university.Of course, for the first time, consumers saw the screen using the micro-led technology, which was unveiled in 2012, as SONY's 55-inch full hd resolution "Crystal LED Display".At the time, the technology was much better than the competition, both in contrast and color.

Of course, the SONY products that use this technology are very expensive, and because the production capacity is very low, there is basically no possibility of mass commercialization.But that doesn't stop companies and businesses from investing and improving micro-led technology.Industry insiders say that micro-led technology is already very close to the level of commercial production.

Micro-led technology is a simple introduction.

Micro-leds have a lot in common with OLED, so the comparison between micro-leds and oleds is easier to understand than LCD.First of all, you can see from the name and this has LED, so they are mainly composed of light emitting diode, so the two technologies are in the form of self-illumination, each red, green, and blue pixel can produce light source, and not require specialized like LCD backlight components.As a result, micro-led displays can also provide extremely high contrast and black levels, as are oleds, and a TFT panel provides energy for each pixel.

The difference between micro- and OLED is the composition of the LED part.The "O" in OLED stands for organic material, which refers to the use of organic material in a pixel pile that produces light.The micro-LED technology USES inorganic gallium nitride material, which is often used in ordinary LED lighting products.This technique reduces the need for polarization and encapsulation layers to make the display panel thinner.So micro-LED components are small, less than 100 mm wide, thinner than human hair.

If you look at this problem from another point of view, micro-leds are traditional leds that are emitted in a smaller way in an array.In fact, leds are not new technology, but sorting arrays on such a small panel is really difficult.In contrast to other display panel technologies, micro-led screens that are used on smaller devices such as smartwatches and smartphones are easier to make.As it turns out, it's hard to increase the size of the micro-led display panel now.Of course, due to the high requirements of welding accuracy, it is difficult to compress the higher resolution to the smartphone screen size.

One unresolved issue for panel makers is how to transfer a large number of leds to a control board.One potential solution is to place the LED in a larger array and then display it through soldering.However, the problem of this method is that the accuracy of the current selection and manufacture is plus or minus 34, which is not consistent with the accuracy requirement of micro-led.

Another alternative is etching LED arrays with IC connections, or transferring a single TFT layer to an LED array.The precision of the etching method avoids the chip welding problem, but improved used to meet the requirements of a light components of small size parts, as well as for achieving high resolution display mode is too expensive and difficult to achieve.The whole manufacturing industry has been making slow progress in this area, so we need to continue to improve production.

In the short term, a round crystal bond seems to be the most feasible process.But the product is currently only available for low-pixel panels, such as smartwatches that require less resolution, rather than smartphones with QHD resolution.Creating a high-resolution micro-led panel is the goal of many vendors, but it requires constant improvement in manufacturing accuracy.

Contrast the advantages and disadvantages of OLED.

Despite the obstacles to manufacturing, micro-led technology is still expected, because micro-leds offer more progress than OLED.The first is the reduction in power of the maximum brightness, that is, under the same low power conditions, micro-leds can achieve greater brightness.By comparison, power consumption is 90% lower than LCD, and 50% lower than OLED.This is a huge attraction for portable devices, such as smartphones, which are very valuable in battery life, which means less power on the screen and longer use time.Compared with current OLED and LCDS, manufacturers can increase the brightness of the panels and better use them in direct sunlight.

In addition, micro-LED display life is longer than OLED.OLED burning is still a big problem, because organic materials have a limited lifespan, especially in blue OLED panels.Micro-leds have no such concerns, and are even longer than the LCD before the color switch.

Smaller micro-LED sizes also make it easier to achieve high resolution, such as 4K or even 8K resolution smartphone or virtual reality screen.When it comes to virtual reality technology, the response time of OLED panels has been reduced to a microsecond level with a very good response time level.This makes them the ideal choice for virtual reality applications.After the change to micro-led, the response time was further reduced to nanosecond level, which was 1000 times faster.

In addition to the above advantages, micro-leds also have a greater advantage in the areas of contrast, color, and flexible display.These all make micro-leds an advantage when compared to oleds, but micro-leds are also much more expensive to make, and are three to four times more expensive than current LCD or OLED panels.There is no doubt that this will increase the cost of the product and even affect the investment of the whole industry.After all, many manufacturers are still expanding the production line of OLED screens.

conclusion

Micro - LED of course sounds very promising, and also has a lot of suitable for the characteristics of mobile devices, but at present many vendors are given priority to with OLED, but high-end LED display panel makers will future will micro - as the main research direction.

It is unclear whether the first to use micro - LED screen when product appearance, should be this year or even in 2019, the first is about micro - LED technology more in-depth discussions, and is valuable in the manufacturers to produce products, may also need a period of time.

Of course, there is also a lot of money to invest in flexible OLED and frameless screens, and developing micro-led technology is not a top priority for these vendors.But in the long run, micro-leds are likely to be the ultimate goal for the entire industry.