COVID-19 has not stopped the development of Micro-LED displays

There is an emerging display type - Micro-LED display, which has the potential to become the next-generation mainstream, with its ability to be fabricated from tiny to huge sizes. The challenges and opportunities are discussed in the IDTechEx report "Micro-LED Displays 2021-2031: Technology, Commercialization, Opportunity, Market and Players".

From mobile phones, TVs, to cars and public screens, displays have become an important component in daily life to convey information.
The importance of displays becomes more significant during COVID-19, as the demand to have a display for remote communication is higher.

COVID-19 has not stopped the development of Micro-LED displays. With CES and Display Week, as well as a number of events being put online, we can see the progress and new launches of Micro-LED display prototypes and products are not affected much.

The increasing number of activities from display suppliers can be seen from the highly cumulated investment and the increasing number of patent filings, as well as the prototypes/products brought in by Micro-LED vendors, such as AUO, PlayNitride, RiTdisplay, Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL, Tianma, Konka, Glo, Plessey, JBD, X-Display, VueReal, CSOT, Sharp, Kyocera; the list can go on.

However, prototypes to prove technology/science readiness with lab/fab scale production are very different from mass manufactured commercial products. The latter requires zero defects for consumer products. Although the science has been proved, there are more engineering and manufacturing issues.

For instance, conventional LEDs can reach external quantum efficiencies (EQEs) to ~70%, while tiny Micro-LEDs less than 10 µm may struggle to reach 20%.

Red LEDs are especially challenging with low EQEs and brittle features. Tiny Micro-LEDs have a large surface area, which may lead to more defects during the fabrication process. Therefore, solving engineering/manufacturing challenges is important, including die size miniaturization while maintaining high efficiency, chip design, and chip manufacturing technique improvement. Other issues include mass transfer yield & accuracy, defect repair, testing, uniformity, light management, color conversion, etc.