MLED (Mini/Micro LED), as the next generation display technology, attracts domestic and foreign display companies to actively deploy. Driven by the huge market potential, accelerating the upgrading of MLED display technology and accelerating its commercialization process have become industry aspirations.
Ouyang Zhongcan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently pointed out when attending a company's commissioning ceremony that my country's semiconductor display has a strong industrial foundation and a complete LED industry chain. With leading TFT design and manufacturing technology, mature semiconductor chips and advanced MLED technology, as well as strong policy support, MLED technology will be the first to realize industrialization in my country. The advantages of MLED technology are popular. With the further popularization of new technologies such as 5G, ultra-high definition, artificial intelligence, and AR/VR, display, as one of the important windows for human-computer interaction and information reception, has become more diversified in application directions. Faced with the new requirements for display technology put forward by industry convergence and innovation, panel companies need to accelerate the development of next-generation new display technologies with better performance to achieve innovative applications that meet ultra-high resolution, ultra-large size, functional integration, flexibility or transparency. MLED is not only good at brightness, contrast, response speedIt has excellent performance in terms of power consumption, lifespan and flexibility. By changing the size of the light-emitting chip and the distance between pixels, and using processes with different processing precisions, applications ranging from micro-displays to ultra-large-size displays can be realized. It can provide more differentiated solutions for the display terminal market, create new application scenarios, and meet the diverse needs of different display products and application scenarios. "These advantages have made MLED technology very popular, and it has gradually become the most watched next-generation new display technology, attracting domestic and foreign display companies to actively deploy." Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out. Today, a number of MLED world-first products and prototypes have been launched at home and abroad, covering AR/VR, watches, car/NB, TV/commercial displays and many other aspects, demonstrating the excellence and application potential of MLED technology. As MLED continues to expand new applications in the display field, high-end large-size TVs, wearable displays, AR/VR, vehicle-mounted displays, etc. will become rapidly growing areas, bringing new development opportunities to MLED displays. Million Insights predicts that the global Mini LED market will reach US$5.9 billion in 2025, with a compound growth rate of 86.60% from 2019 to 2025; in the field of Micro LED, according to IHS predicts that global Micro LED display shipments will reach 15.5 million units in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 99.00%. Driven by the huge market potential, accelerating the upgrade of MLED display technology and accelerating its commercialization process have become industry aspirations. my country's MLED industry has a strong foundation. At present, my country's LED display industry has ranked first in the world, forming a relatively complete LED industry chain and industrial clusters, covering terminal applications, panel manufacturing, packaging, chips, core materials and equipment and other fields. In 2020, the output value of mainland China's LED industry chain reached 701.3 billion yuan, of which the output value of LED display applications was approximately 196.3 billion yuan. At the same time, China is also the world's largest LED chip R&D and production base. Chinese companies have strong LED chip manufacturing capabilities and technological innovation capabilities, and LED chips are a key component of MLED technology. Ouyang Zhongcan believes that with leading TFT design and manufacturing technology, mature semiconductor chips and advanced MLED technology, MLED technology will be the first to realize industrialization in my country. In addition, my country's policy support for the MLED display industry is very strong. From industrial layer design to standardized layout to structural optimization and many other aspects, our country has relevant policiesThe policy is launched to strengthen the guidance and promotion of the MLED display industry, thereby attracting more upstream materials, device fields and downstream module companies to join, continue to expand the overall scale of the industry, and the advantages of industrial agglomeration are beginning to show. Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out that as the leading companies in the industry chain start production one after another, the rapid growth of related industries will be accelerated. Under the synergy of the industrial chain, Chinese companies can quickly reduce the cost of MLEDs and stride towards the consumer application market. MLED may develop into Nano LED in the future. Although MLED direct display technology has outstanding advantages, there are still many technical bottlenecks to be overcome at this stage. Ouyang Zhongcan introduced that for example, epitaxial growth has poor uniformity, LED chip efficiency is low, mass transfer yield is low and takes a long time, among which mass transfer technology is a key part. The so-called "mass transfer" is the process of correctly and efficiently moving millions or even tens of millions of ultra-fine LED chips to the circuit substrate after completing the production of micron-level LED chips. Take 4K TV as an example. 4K usually refers to 4096×2160 resolution. Assuming that each pixel has 3 R/G/B dies, up to 26 million dies need to be transferred to make a 4K TV. Current mass transfer technologies include elastic seal micro-transfer technology, laser transfer technology, and flowBody transfer processes, etc., but these technologies are not mature enough, and the yield and transfer efficiency cannot reach the level of MLED mass production. This has further pushed up the manufacturing cost, resulting in the high price of current MLED products. Especially the elastic seal micro-transfer technology requires a large number of repeated seal movements to print red, green and blue colors, which is very inefficient. In this regard, Ouyang Zhongcan pointed out that in the future, MLED direct display may consider manufacturing red, blue, and green light directly in the integrated circuit according to the design. "MLED direct display should take the form of chips, and chip practitioners should consider MLED direct display in future designs." In addition, MLED faces new technical difficulties in materials, equipment, chips, driver ICs, backplane design and packaging. "In order to enrich display application scenarios and achieve more delicate visual effects, chip and package sizes in LED displays are shrinking, and MLED display technology may develop into Nano LED (QNED) display technology in the future." Ouyang Zhongcan emphasized. It is worth mentioning that with packaging technology as the key point, domestic companies have innovatively developed COG MLED packaging technology based on the original SMD and COB packaging technologies. COG MLED backlight technology features constant current drive, high brightness, high contrast, no flicker and high splicing flatness, are expected to become the mainstream direction of the future development of the display industry. (Source: China Electronic News)
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