One by one the technical bottleneck breakthrough, Micro LED commercialization process asymptotic

When Apple released the OLED display panel display technology as Apple Watch, is to let Apple fans as one of the bright eyes, and praise the OLED display color is highly saturated, especially the panel size of the latest Apple Watch was greater than the previous generation, is attracting many Apple fans look. The latest message, Apple will bring a new generation of products display technology to Micro LED, have set off a research heat of the display industry, no longer spared no effort, hope in the lead position in commercial production status.

Apple Watch will use Micro LED

Micro LED display the LED size of micron grade, independent control, with independent control, light emitting pixel features Gao Huidu, low power consumption, high resolution and high color saturation, and if combined with nano wiring, may let the ultra small LED reached micron level can be bent flexible display characteristics.

Because the Micro LED display and OLED with a similar high color saturation, the self luminous principle, the advantages and characteristics of the 1/10 power consumption of only the liquid crystal panel, plus, apple and SONY have expressed hope that in 2018 by Micro LED display panel as a portable product display, Micro display technology into LED one of the industry's most popular topic, so Apple acquired in 2014 showed that LuxVue technology based on Micro & LED.

LuxVue in the Micro LED display technology field has every kind of patent application, such as the use of applications in 2015 "at the same time with the luminous power and sensing function of the LED, as a display panel, with sensing function is triggered by the industry attention. Like the recently published iPhone X in addition to fingerprint identification is eliminated by using physical sensors, instead of sensor screen inside face scanning identification.

In addition, as a new generation of BMW development, the use of bold breakthrough design concept in the 3 series, and 5 series is also introduced. Apple Watch is the first to use OLED as a display screen, then this year published a new generation of iPhone X and iPhone 8 connection with. And a new generation of Apple Watch Micro LED is expected to do so for the display screen, the industry began to boldly predict whether the next iPhone will like OLED, Apple Watch by Micro LED followed as display screen.

For the Micro LED display focus when commercialization, both display industry, or intelligent mobile phone industry, large-scale TV industry, OLED display industry and so on are all hopeful and care, and are also in the Micro LED display technology continues to advance, the specific field of freedom to devote in.

150 m Micro LED will appear in 2018?

According to a Micro LED display LEDinside research report published in July 2017, the Micro LED display into the biggest bottleneck in actual production, or to be in the micron size LED chip, a huge number of transferred to the circuit board (Backplane), it is often said that the industry in a huge amount of transfer (Mass Transfer). Although the Micro LED display technology attracts the world's major display industry, semiconductor industry and LED industry to actively join, but for the production bottleneck - the above Micro LED display are also stepping up a massive transfer, unique technology, to enhance the capacity of UPH (the number of hours; unit per hour in each hour can produce unit), the yield and the massive transfer of LED chip and the best suitable size, hope to be able to lead into the production stage, pull out the market to the top (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Micro LED display technology to attract major related field of global industry, hope to be able to lead into the production stage, pull out the market to the top. (source: LEDinside)

In this report, the definition of Micro LED chip size below 100 m, but at present, the industry for the development of Micro LED mainstream size is 150 m, the massive transfer of technology development are based on 150 m as the goal, so the market believe that the emergence of the first generation of Micro LED display and projector module of the LED size will fall in 150 m. Along with market acceptance and expand the scale of production capacity, will have the opportunity to look forward to the competitive industry further investment, and developed 100 m or 100 m smaller than the size of LED and the massive transfer of technology.

However, for manufacturing Micro LED display production technology, a huge amount of technology transfer is only one of the key technologies in 4 major production process, there are many other difficulties need to overcome one by one. At present, the massive transfer of technology, how to achieve high yield and low investment efficiency need to view aspects to observe, including equipment accuracy improvement, reduce the rate of transfer, when the shorter production time and high reliable detection methods and equipment, defective products in processing and reduce the production costs and the use of more intelligent production methods the pace of progress, the 7 main areas.

One breakthrough technology bottleneck

Not only the massive transfer of technology is the most difficult to reach, as part of the RGB Micro LED in red color and how to enhance the brightness of the LED at the micron level, the degree of difficulty is very high, the relative technical ability test of LED epitaxial operators.

In addition, even in the semiconductor industry suppliers, including LED chip, and display the overall supply chain will be added and developed, such as LuxVue, eLux, VueReal, X-Celeprint, CE of France