Four in one Mini LED is coming! Does the small spacing LED display change greatly?

In mid June, at the IFC exhibition in the United States, including the joint construction of optoelectronics, alto electronics and other domestic LED display giant brands launched the next generation of "small spacing LED" to display new products. These products that use four in one mini-LED technology are known as "the best of both worlds" for traditional and COB technologies. Under the new technology, what kind of change will LED display?

More integrated packaging: four in one mini-LED

This small spacing LED new product has two "innovative technology features": the first is Mini LED, which is the application of LED crystal with a size of 100 microns or less. This smaller crystal particle is almost 1/10 of the traditional 300 micron size LED crystal material. Smaller Mini LED means lower upstream cost and smaller "downstream terminal pixel spacing index", but it also means "more difficult midstream packaging technology".

The second technical characteristics of this new product, "four in one", refer to the package specification for the middle reaches. On the one hand, the traditional lamp is basically a pixel, including three or four LED crystals. On the other hand, the traditional COB products, such as SONY or Samsung's products, are "big CELL" packages. There are hundreds, thousands and thousands of pixels in a package structure.

The "four in one" packaging structure can be regarded as a compromise strategy between traditional and COB products: there are four basic pixel structures in a package structure. The advantages of this package lie in: 1. overcoming the technical difficulty of COB packaging and single crystal structure of CELL LED; 2., for downstream terminal manufacturers, the geometric size of the basic package unit will not be "very small" because of "too small pixel spacing", and then lead to "surface mount" welding difficulty improvement; 3. 1 A basic package structure with a good geometric size helps to repair the "bad lights" of the small spacing LED display, and even meets the "manual" repair requirements (0.X's surface mount products and COB products do not have such characteristics).

Therefore, the overall "four in one" packaging structure is the focus of this new product show: Mini LED mainly provides the necessity of adopting the "four in one" structure. The 100 micron LED crystal has a single pixel packaging structure, which is very small in size and exceeds the limit of the economic application of the surface mount technology. At the same time, this integration of four pixels in one package has also produced unique application advantages, such as maintainability, the economy of the product and the visual sense of COB products.

Four in one mini-LED why is "more economic"?

In the small spacing LED market, high-end products are not scarce. For example, SONY CLED products, using standard COB packaging and Micro-LED crystal particles (smaller than mini-LED crystal particles of an order of magnitude). However, such products are often "expensive", almost can not enter the 2-5 yuan per square meter small spacing LED mass market.

Under the COB technology, Micro-LED is "too high" and the economy has blocked the market access. This point is clear to all LED companies. Therefore, in the next generation of technology, how to achieve "low cost" has become the most concerned content of all industry manufacturers. Among them, the main technical ideas include: 1. do not use Micro-LED particles, such as the majority of COB packaging on the market LED display; 2. do not use COB technology, the use of surface mount technology, which is the reason why the traditional LED display is cheaper.

For the four in one mini-LED technology, it can be said that the characteristics of the above two low-cost technologies are: MINI-LED particles, achieving smaller LED crystal particles, saving upstream costs, meeting the needs of more detailed display, avoiding the "limit size" of Micro-LED technology, and avoiding the manufacturing of upstream crystals. The middle reaches are encapsulated into a series of "technology traps" for the integration of downstream machines.

At the same time, the "four in one" encapsulation structure can make the surface paste process still be "behind the scenes". Today, the surface display technology, which is suitable for 1 spaced size, can produce LED display with a minimum 0.6 mm spacing. It greatly inherits the most mature process, equipment and manufacturing experience of LED display industry, and realizes the "low cost" of terminal processing. Moreover, the "four in one" packaging structure also uses the design of shared cathode and border wiring, which is also conducive to optimizing terminal manufacturing process, less welding points and improving the cost of products.

Therefore, the four in one mini-LED is, first of all, a "innovation" that can inherit the economy of the previous generation as much as possible. This will be one of the core fulcrum of the four in one mini-LED product to succeed in the market.

How do four in one mini-LED do better?

As a new generation of products, if we only think of low cost, we will not succeed. The success of the four in one mini-LED market still depends on better visual performance.

First, the four in one mini-LED is a "LED display technology for smaller crystal particles". This means that this product supports more elaborate display. In the small spacing LED market, the long-standing "bottleneck of mainstream product spacing" will be completely broken. In the future, it is possible to achieve 0.X based display product layout and even enter the home display market.

Second, the small spacing LED shows the market. The main reason for the popularity of COB technology is that this technology can effectively overcome the "LED" pixel granulation problem and enhance the robustness of the whole screen. Four in one mini-LED, although each basic packaging unit has only four pixels, it still belongs to a more integrated package. Obviously, it has many characteristics of COB display. At the same time, the MINI-LED crystal particles make the area of the LED crystal on the display area decrease, which is 9 lower than that of the traditional product with the same spacing index. It has more space to provide better "tightness" and "optical design", and further enhance the visual experience and reliability of the product. It can be said that the four in one mini-LED and COB small spacing LED, are highly overcome LED display "pixel granulation" phenomenon, and provide higher stability technology.

The third, fourth in one mini-LED technology adopts flip chip technology at the level of crystal packaging. The flip chip process has no soldering line, and there is no problem of LED lamp not bright, flickering and light fading due to false welding or poor contact. At the same time, flip chip technology can maximize the effective luminous area of LED crystal, and provide the effective cooling area of LED crystal to the greatest extent, further improving the optical properties and reliability of the product. The flip chip technology is regarded as the "key direction" for the next generation of LED to display crystal packaging.

The technical advantages of fourth, fourth in one mini-LED are not limited to 0.X products. The products of this new technology can also be applied to products with larger spacing, such as P1.5 or even P2.0. That is to say, this is a technology that can meet all the needs of all mainstream small spacing LED display products and future smaller spacing LED display products.

Fifth, the most significant disadvantage of mini-LED technology is the "highest luminance reduction". However, it still provides up to 800-1200 lumens of brightness, which is fully enough for indoor display, and even more comfortable and healthy than the high brightness screens. For a long time, the emphasis of indoor LED display research is heavy. The point is to reduce brightness and achieve better gray scale display performance under low brightness. MINI-LED has obvious advantages in this aspect.

Sixth, the application of mini-LED technology is in line with the development trend of LED semiconductor industry. The electro-optical efficiency of LED semiconductor industry has been continuously improved, and the machining accuracy of crystals has also been increasing. This allows many applications of LED products to consume smaller crystals and less materials to achieve the desired brightness effect. On the basis of this basic technology trend, small spacing LED shows that even if it does not develop to smaller space products, it will gradually adopt smaller volume LED crystal particles.

Therefore, the four in one mini-LED product is a new product that is in line with the future trend and product trend, has been fully enhanced in display experience and is in line with the next generation standard. The combination of experience upgrading and cost control is bound to be conducive to the popularization of the four in one mini-LED market. However, this is not all the advantages of four in one mini-LED.

Four in one mini-LED embodies industrial chain cooperation, winning downstream manufacturers' support

For COB small spacing LED, the biggest feature of this product is "high integration of midstream packaging". Packaging enterprises have encapsulated thousands of or even more LED particles into an integrated body. This integrated body already has the characteristics of displaying products. Therefore, the downstream enterprises have to do more "assembly", and the core technology accounts for a lot less than the surface technology.

However, the four in one mini-LED is still four pixels and 12 LED particles in essence. Downstream manufacturers' core assets and technical advantages in the surface mount technology are all inherited. Even the middle reaches of the packaging enterprise, "massive MINI-led integration" difficulty has been "around the past". This makes the four in one mini-LED have the following characteristics: 1. the middle reaches enterprises are more likely to supply a large quantity; 2., the downstream industry chain's autonomy and core technology status are maintained.

The four in one mini-LED, under the premise of highly integrated and smaller crystal LED particles, the downstream manufacturers almost do not sacrifice the interests of the industry, and do not need to transfer the technology dominance, and maximize the value of the large number of surface display technology assets already available in the LED display industry. The ability of merchants to "divide" cakes. This makes this technology more popular with downstream manufacturers.

However, the four in one mini-LED also has its "disadvantage": that is, like COB technology, in the packaging stage, the "pixel spacing" of the final product has been determined. This makes the middle reaches of the packaging enterprises must provide "more specifications of the four in one". The latter requires closer cooperation between the upstream and downstream industries, from the component level to the "product" level. This may further promote the emergence of the industry "group" characterized by the "middle reaches and downstream" alliance in the LED display market.

On the whole, compared with COB technology, the four in one mini-LED makes full use of the existing industrial technology, resources and assets, leaving more value space for downstream manufacturers, and achieving obvious improvement and improvement in the display effect and experience. As one of the directions of technological innovation in the LED display industry, it can be said to be "compromise", or "comprehensive". It is precisely because of compromise that the four in one mini-LED has the advantage of reducing technical difficulty and cost control. This makes the four in one mini-LED easier to become the "pioneer of change" in the industry. In 2018, the four in one mini-LED is expected to become a dark horse in the LED display market.

Source: projection age

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