After years of delay, this promising technology might finally be turning the corner. Israeli tech has a big role to play.
From Jan 5 to Jan 7, nearly 50,000 people flocked to Las Vegas for this year’s CES, the annual leading consumer electronics trade show. After the 2021 CES had been forced to a virtual platform due to COVID-19, there was plenty of excitement leading up to this year’s event. As usual, one area of major interest was displays. Receiving particular attention was the newest display technology beginning to emerge on the market: microLED. The emergence of microLED displays is a welcome development for Israeli hi-tech; the ultimate fate of microLED depends on expertise that the Israeli ecosystem has nurtured for decades.
microLED is a revolutionary display technology with self-emissive pixels, allowing for unprecedented color contrast, resolution, and flexibility. World leaders in display manufacturing featured their newest displays, and Samsung and LG made a big splash with news that they would soon be releasing new models of microLED TVs. Currently these TVs are still not a realistic option for most consumers due to their astronomical prices ($150K for one of Samsung’s models!) Why does microLED technology hold so much promise, and what are some of the major challenges currently preventing it from achieving mass-production at affordable rates?
microLED is different than the LCD screens that are used in most TVs, smartphones, and laptops that are on the market today. LCD (liquid crystal display) is comprised of a large solid backlight, with individual, colored pixels that are positioned in front of it. Whenever the device is powered on, the entire backlight is turned on, and then the appropriate pixels are activated at any given moment to project the appropriate color. The limitations of LCD are clear: every time you need any constellation of colors to be displayed, the entire backlight is turned on, consuming lots of unneeded electrical power. Because the source of light is the backlight, some of the color resolution suffers, and specifically black color tends to be somewhat muted.
While another display technology, OLED (Organic LED), solves many of these problems, OLED presents many challenges of its own. The most fundamental problem is that OLED, of course, is made up of an organic material. The organic elements in the screen render it extremely fragile; a broken screen exposes the display to oxygen and moisture, almost immediately destroying it. Consumers have also reported some cases of burn-in, in which a certain color pattern will leave a mark that remains even after the scene changes or the device is turned off. On top of it all, the manufacturing process is very expensive and complicated.
microLED, on the other hand, addresses the limitations of LCD, without any of the drawbacks of OLED. The display is comprised of millions of tiny (single-micron!) self-emitting chips, each one able to be activated or deactivated on its own. This allows for better power consumption, wonderful color contrast, and true black pictures. The pixels are smaller and brighter than ever, resulting in a high-resolution viewing experience, ideal and necessary for the most advanced AR and VR near-eye devices. The lack of a single backlight also paves the way for all sorts of forms, like flexible, bendable, and rollable screens.
So what is holding back microLED from fully taking off? One of the main obstacles in the way of microLED replacing LCD and OLED is the issue of yields. All manufactured displays are inspected for defects, and then a certain percentage of these displays pass inspection. However, the inspection tools that manufactures have been employing for previous display technologies are inadequate for microLED displays. Because the pixels are so much smaller than ever before, the current inspection tools simply can’t provide all of the data that is needed to obtain a comprehensive and thorough level of inspection. The market demands an inspection technology that offers the multi-faceted, sub-micron, high-resolution capability that microLED requires.
The key that will unlock microLEDs, and make them a technological and commercial reality, is a nano-optical solution, one that can provide this robust, high-resolution optical capability. Fortunately, the Israeli ecosystem has led the world in this realm for decades. With giants in testing and optics like Orbotech (recently acquired by KLA-Tencor) and Camtek, as well as industry leaders in semiconductors like Intel, DSP, and Tower, Israel offers the world top-tier expertise in the most relevant areas, with both long-time industry leaders and younger start-ups focused on many of these critical fields. InZiv is proud to be one of the companies leading the way in the realm of microLED testing and characterization.
As the inspection solutions emerge in the coming years, we should see a growing share of the display market turning towards microLEDs. The potential is truly exciting; the most intriguing AR and VR advances all depend on microLED for their high-resolution devices. Israel’s deep-tech experience in the field of nano-optics and semi-conductors will no doubt play a critical role in transforming microLEDs from a dream to a reality.
