Micro-LED

This is a guest post by Sri Peruvemba, Chair of Marketing, Society for Information Display

How will computing change in the coming years? The better question to ask is what won’t change. Thanks to a new platform, microdisplays and computing in general will transform how we communicate, how we live, even the way we express ourselves to each another. Ultimately, laptops, tablets, phones or smartwatches will go the way of the CRT. As will keyboards and mice. They’ll be replaced by innovative new wearables, inconspicuous devices that will interpret eye-blinks, voice commands, and hand gestures. A miniscule camera will follow your fingertips and body movements, allowing you to transpose images and text with ease, not unlike those depicted in Ready Player One.

The basic technology is here—used by Google, Microsoft, Oculus, MagicLeap, and other pioneers. And so is the demand. Refinements that improve performance and drive down costs are needed. But the world’s biggest players are on board. Form will follow function. Economies of scale will nosedive production costs. Within this realm, three display technologies have moved to the forefront. One appears to be slipstreaming those behind it into the 22nd century—microOLEDs.

DSCC updated their display industry forecasts, saying that as LCD prices continue to fall it revises the capacity forecast downward by 6% as Display makers are delaying and cancelling LCD investments. DSCC's OLED capacity forecast is also reduced by 4% - and is now growing at a CAGR of 19% from 2016 to 2025 (the main reason is the cancellation of Visionox V2 phase 2 and LGD's E6 Phase 3).

DSCC says that OLED TV roadmap is still not clear as Chinese makers are not ready to commit to OLED TV production. DSCC does see next-generation TV capacity coming online in the future - which could be inkjet-printed OLEDs, OVJP, MicroLEDs and other potential technologies. But the next-generation display market is certainly not clear yet and DSCC sees an extended forecast during which demand will outpace supply (especially as average TV size continues to grow).

The government of the Guangzhou province in China announced that it aims to help its local display industry and have allocated large funds - up to 2 billion RMB (around $285 million USD) in subsidies per company. The goal is to help companies invest in production of emerging display technologies - including OLEDs, Micro-LEDs, QD-LEDs, 3D displays, e-paper displays, graphene enhanced display technologies and more.

The subsidies will be given to companies that start trial production, and when mass production begins.

PlayNitride demonstrated its latest Micro-LED displays at SID DisplayWeek 2019 - a 7.56" 720x480 (114 PPI) transparent MicroLED, a flexible Micro-LED on a polyimide substrate and a high-brightness, high-resolution passive matrix MicroLED aimed towards wearable applications.

PlayNitride aims to release its first Micro-LED display products by the end of 2019. In 2017 the company started to sample micro-LED panels and shipped samples to 10-20 potential customers.