What They Say
Semiconductor Engineering spoke to Eric Virey of Yole Développement who highlighted that a number of breakthroughs are needed for a volume breakthrough for microLED – not least a need to “reduce cost by 20X to 30X for mainstream adoption”. The paper also spoke to Lam Research, Lumileds, Veeco and KLA who explained some of the challenges in mass transfer, testing and consistent performance. In manufacturing the article said that microLEDs will require
- Class 100 cleanroom (less than 100 particles per ft3, ?0.5 µm),
- a switch to processing on 200 mm sapphire wafers,
- scaling of epitaxial processes (MOCVD) to 200 mm,
- upgrading from mask aligners to i-line wafer steppers for patterning, and
- single-wafer 200 mm tools for RIE, electroplating, wafer stripping, and perhaps wafer cleaning as well.
- Most crucially, these tools must employ tight process controls using SPC and newer artificial intelligence programs.
What We Think
Apart from the items in manufacturing above, I’m not sure that this article adds much to what we have reported, but would be useful for anybody new to microLED and its challenges. (BR)
