What They Say
We got an email to advise us that Nanosys had purchased Gl?, which has been developing technology for microLEDs.
In a Youtube interview on Nanosys’ Youtube channel, Jason Hartlove (at this point in the talk) gave some background on the acquisition saying that the eventual ‘end point’ for Nanosys was to develop electrically-driven QDs and it has worked on this and has developed a prototype of an ink-jet printed display that is air processable that works and’ looks great’ but is some years away from having the lifetime and manufacturability for commercial use. In the meantime, there are some applications where microLED can be a market, especially in AR where you need high brightness and very high ppi at the same time.
When you make such a small LED (maybe 2? square) in red, the edge to surface area becomes too high and edge defects kill the efficiency of the microLED. On the other hand, blue is still OK. On that basis combining red QDs with a blue microLED, Nanosys believes, is the only way to solve this problem. Hartlove said that Nanosys worked out that on the 100″ Samsung LED TV, there is the equivalent of 6 LED wafers in LED area (not allowing for gaps and defects). It has to be expensive because of this, so you need much smaller LEDs to enter even the TV market.
Integrating the QDs with the blue LED is tricky and acquiring Gl? helps with that process.
Hartlove said that he believes that Gl? is the only company in the world that has shown it can create red, green and blue separate microLEDs that can be transferred onto an LTPS substrate at less than 20 micron edge size. For many applications, that is already usable.
Prior to the acquisition, Gl? is reported to have invested $200 million in developing its technology since 2003. No financial details of the transaction have been released.
What We Think
I may return to this topic, but as usual in Display Week, there is so much to talk about. I’m a long way from a representative sample of Display Week, but I’m already getting the sense that, in line with the standard ‘hype curve’, the arrival of microLED may have slipped a bit as the challlenges are getting worked out. Still, it’s a very exciting time in the technology of displays with many possible future scenarios. (BR)
JDI showed this Glo microLED with 3K nits as long ago as 2019
