Micro LEDs have emerged with great potential for application. Micro LED is a new generation of display technology, which refers to miniaturized LED arrays. The design of LED structures is thin-film, miniaturized, and arrayed to make their volume approximately 1% of the size of commonly used LEDs. Each pixel is customized and driven to emit light separately, reducing the distance between pixels from the original millimeter level to the micrometer level. The Micro LED fabrication process combines MOEMS technology and LED fabrication process, which has advantages such as good repeatability and consistency. It can achieve ultra-high resolution (over 1500ppi), long luminescence life, good material stability, and can avoid residual effects of OLED devices. It has great commercial potential in the future.
With higher efficiency and lower power consumption, Micro LEDs are expected to significantly extend battery life. In recent years, the efficiency of luminescent materials in the field of OLED has been continuously improved. However, in comparison, the luminous efficiency of LED is still the highest, about twice that of OLED, while the luminous efficiency of Micro LED is about four times that of LED. Micro LED only consumes 10-20% of the energy of LCD and OLED, while screen energy typically accounts for 50-60% of the total energy consumption of smartphones. Using Micro LED is expected to significantly reduce phone energy consumption and provide longer battery life.
Major giants are actively laying out, and the dawn of commercialization for Micro LED has emerged. OFweek reports that Apple will conduct tests on devices equipped with Micro LED in Taiwan this year and be the first to launch a batch of Apple Watches that use this technology. Subsequently, it is not ruled out that Micro LED displays will be applied on Apple phones. Apple acquired LuxVue, a company that researches and develops Micro LEDs, as early as 2014. Over the years, its technology reserves have continuously increased and its patent reserves are abundant. In addition, recently Hon Hai announced to the public that in order to lay out Micro LED, the most promising new generation display technology after OLED, the company has invested approximately $10 million through its subsidiary CyberNet to acquire a portion of eLux's shares. Elux has already established a patent layout in Micro LED transfer technology.

     Meanwhile, unlike major companies like Apple that intend to apply Micro LED to wearable devices or mobile products, Sony is the first to showcase the 110 inch indoor large display CLEDIS (Crystal LED Integrated Structure) produced using Micro LED technology, which stunning the outside world in terms of image quality and contrast. In addition, foreign research teams include Texas Institute of Technology in the United States, the University of Illinois in the United States, and the University of Strathclye in the United Kingdom, among others. According to a report by LEDinside, if estimated based on the scale of components that completely replace existing LCD displays, including backlight modules, LCD screens, polarizers, etc., the potential market size of Micro LEDs in the future can reach approximately 30-40 billion US dollars.
Technology and cost are the main bottlenecks, and large-scale applications will take time. The main technical challenge currently faced by Micro LEDs is Mass Transfer technology. Similar to the preparation method of LED, Micro LED can be made by etching on a sapphire substrate, but the difficulty lies in the need to transfer the traditional LED array, miniaturization, and massive addressing onto the circuit substrate to form ultra small pitch LED, in order to achieve ultra-high pixel and ultra-high resolution. The entire process requires extremely high requirements for the transfer process, with a yield of 99.9999% and accuracy controlled within plus or minus 0.5% μ Within m, the difficulty is extremely high.
At present, there are four transfer related technologies: van der Waals force, electrostatic adsorption, phase change transfer, and laser ablation, but the related processes are not yet mature. In addition, according to LEDinside's estimation, the manufacturing cost of Micro LED display technology is still 3-4 times that of existing display products. Therefore, manufacturers are actively increasing product added value, improving chips, and transferring technology yield to achieve cost reduction goals. It is estimated that it will take 3-5 years to replace existing LCD products.