What They Say
Kulicke & Soffa said that it has started to ship its Luminex ‘next generation mini and microLED solution’. The firm said that the step is the culmination of several years’ development including the acquisition of Uniqarta in February of this year (Kulicke & Soffa acquires microLED placement technology developer Uniqarta). The equipment supports sorting, mixing and pitch adjust steps in placing LEDs for direct display or backlight applications.
A report on the bits&Chips website said that, with parallelisation, the Luminex system could perform up to 10,000 placements per second in around four years. However for 8K display, even faster speeds will be needed.
The firm started shipping Pixalux machines based on IP from Rohinni in 2019 for miniLED and the firm had sold 100 machines by December 2020.
“The Pixalux today can do the final placement onto the substrate but doesn’t do the sorting or the repitching,” CTO Bob Chylak explained. “The Luminex can do sorting, repitching and the final placement with its better accuracy and laser transfer. It opens up RGB applications for both mini and microLED.”
On 2 November, in the Bits&Chips Sysarch webinar series on system architecture, Rik van der Burg of K&S will give a talk on the Pixalux platform
What We Think
This is quite a key move.. The Pixalux technology was for backlights but the Luminex system can support direct view as well. Interesting times! (BR)
