On August 8th Beijing time, China Touchscreen Network reported that Micro LED supply chain is actively investing in research and development to master key technologies and process patents. Micro LED, as a new generation of display technology, continues to receive market attention, especially from Apple panel supply chain manufacturers who continue to invest in research and development. Display technology is a strong point for Taiwanese companies, with profound experience in technology and manufacturing processes.

In addition to traditional giants such as AU, Innolux, Jingdian, and Foxconn, there are also many teams in Taiwan researching Micro LED technology. Micro LED not only requires certain display technology, but also needs to create suitable display driver ICs, mechanism components, and circuits to fully utilize the excellent performance of Micro LED. Therefore, supply chains need to cooperate with each other.

Accumulate and publish the first MicroLED driver IC

At Display Week 2018, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Neptunium Technology, and AU Optronics showcased their latest products in Mini LED and Micro LED, respectively. Other related products such as Innolux and Juju were also exhibited.

If accumulated, the industry's first LED driver IC with True 16 Bit Grayscale Mini LED and Micro LED, MBI5359, will be showcased, along with an ultra small pitch Mini LED enclosure that can be arbitrarily spliced. This feature will help LED displays achieve HDR image specifications, transmitting high-quality images with high grayscale and high contrast at a high refresh rate of 3840Hz.

Cai Zongda, Deputy Manager of the Market Department of Jiji Technology, said: "There are still several mainstream technologies competing in the panel trend. Currently, LCD/OLED is the dominant technology. In order to achieve HDR and more energy-efficient performance indicators, LCD competes with OLED by using Mini LED to implement a direct backlight module with high brightness area to improve the long criticized poor contrast of LCD. Currently, multiple manufacturers have implemented this concept, and the display effect of OLED is quite similar. Mini LED has a small size and can achieve dimming areas of thousands of zones, shortening the optical distance (OD) and allowing direct backlight to be installed in thin and light display bodies

Micro LED has more advantages in the application of indoor displays, including wider viewing angle, higher reliability, and no moir é phenomenon. Compared to SMD LEDs, Micro LEDs do not exhibit color cast or interference between LEDs at different viewing angles.

Cai Zongda believes that "Accumulated LED driver ICs have high channel counts, coupled with scanning drivers and other characteristics. Compared with other solutions in the market, they can achieve up to 20-30 times the number of dimming areas, making them mass producible. Therefore, many panel manufacturers have introduced accumulation solutions. Micro LED, as a panel application, mainly targets large displays. If smaller sized panels are to be imported, PPI pointers will be a challenge for driver ICs. How to achieve higher integration to make Micro LED driver IC solutions more reasonable while meeting visual effect requirements will be the research and development focus of Accumulated's investment

Mass transfer is the primary challenge

What technologies still have breakthroughs in the development of Micro LED? Huang Bingkai, the department manager of the Micro LED product development division, said, "Micro LED requires new equipment for grain transfer due to its smaller grain volume, and the technology of large-scale transfer will be the first challenge. After the grain is transferred to the PCB substrate, the flatness of the PCB is the second challenge, and an uneven substrate will reduce the transfer yield. After the grain transfer is completed, the driving IC requires lower constant current driving technology (less than 0.5Ma) to drive the Micro LED. A driver IC with high integration and LED error/bad pixel prediction can overcome the wiring difficulties of limited PCB space and perform yield detection after transfer

There are also relevant plans for the market application of Micro LED. Cai Zongda said, "Jiji has always focused on the field of LED driver ICs. For Micro LED related applications, high integration ICs such as MBI5359/MBI5759 have been supplied as early solutions to various manufacturers. However, Micro LED has a wide range of applications, from large-sized Signage applications to small and medium-sized ones, with significant differences in demand specifications. However, common requirements such as low current precision control below 100uA and power consumption reduction will be the focus of Micro LED driver ICs. Accumulation will develop corresponding driver ICs based on different application partitions, so there will be differences in architecture selection and integration compared to current solutions. At present, we have started to cooperate with system brand factories and large panel factories

Huang Bingkai also said, "Jiji is expected to start mass producing Mini LED displays with customers in the first quarter of 2019. Jiji is responsible for providing module solutions for Mini LED+PCB+IC, and is not involved in the design of the entire screen. In the first quarter of 2020, Jiji will start mass producing Micro LED displays with a dot pitch of less than 0.05, which Mini LED has not yet achieved. The application market will mainly focus on high-end applications such as indoor central control, advertising, and exhibitions

ELux achieves breakthroughs in fluid assembly technology

Another American eLux company acquired by Foxconn. It was founded in 2016 and is a startup focused on Micro LED mass transfer technology.

ELux recently revealed that its fluid assembly and positioning technology has obtained a patent, which can achieve maximum assembly speed and is a major breakthrough in technology. At a seminar held by TrendForce, Lux founder and technical director Paul Schuele also shared how to practically apply fluid assembly transfer methods to produce light-emitting displays.

And Nvidia Technology, invested by Jingdian, also released Micro LED full-color screen samples this year. The founding team of Neptunium Creation is mostly based on LED technology, but Neptunium Creation is not an LED factory and does not have LED epitaxial production capacity. However, its Micro LED technology development and design capabilities are quite strong, and it can provide complete solutions, as well as MicroLED's PixeLED display technology.

AU showcases high-resolution full-color 8-inch Micro LED display

Micro LED is a self luminous display technology that uses a miniaturized LED array structure, which has advantages such as high brightness, high contrast, wide color gamut, wide viewing angle, fast response time, lightweight, and low power consumption. This year, AU Optronics showcased the world's highest resolution full-color active 8-inch Micro LED display at SID 2018. It adopts LTPS backplane driving technology, and each pixel can be independently driven to emit light, achieving finer high dynamic contrast performance and low power consumption advantages. The LED size is less than 30um, with a pixel density of up to 169 PPI, and combined with color conversion technology, it can present more excellent and accurate colors.

In addition to the breakthrough in Micro LED research and development, in the Mini LED backlight technology section, AU also showcased gaming monitors, gaming laptops, and VR head mounted display panels that use Mini LED backlight technology, aiming to capture the high-end gaming and niche application markets. In terms of Mini LED backlight technology, compared to general side lit backlight sources, the direct type Mini LED backlight source can achieve more precise local dimming effects, providing ultimate picture quality with higher brightness and dynamic contrast.

In various applications of LTPS technology, AU has also launched panels suitable for various mobile devices, including the world's first 13.3-inch UHD 4K narrow bezel LTPS panel that supports a stylus. AU Optronics has started providing samples of Mini LED backlit LCD panels for gaming displays to customers for testing.

From this perspective, the progress of Micro LED is quite rapid, and major manufacturers are actively laying out in the market. Supply chains such as Juju are also showcasing key components at this year's exhibition to seize this business opportunity.