Micro-LED Meliorism
Micro-LED technology has been heralded as the eventual basis for a new display industry, citing high brightness, high contrast, and the potential for low cost production, and a number of leading CE companies have taken up the micro-LED flag, promoting the concept and funding component development and process research. That said, there are a number of significant challenges that must be met before the technology can be applied to consumer devices in a cost-effective manner, and while micro-LED research continues to find point solutions to some of those problems, the segment remains in the R&D stage, despite the few ‘showpiece’ products that appear in the press.
Some of the issues concerning the cost structure of the micro-LED production process have to do with moving the vast number of ultra-small LED structures from a wafer to a substrate, but making that process even more complex is the necessity to evaluate each micro-LEDs characteristics before they are moved, without doing damage. Once each of the almost 25m micro-LEDs needed for a 4K display have been characterized, which at the least would encompass brightness, color point, and electrical characteristics, after which those die that did not meet minimal standards would be marked as unusable and exempted from the transfer process. This means that the transfer process, which in most cases needs to be done in groups, would have to be able to skip those micro-LEDs that do not meet standards, making bulk transfers like stamping, considerably more difficult, or more complex at the next stage, where those under=performing micro-LEDs would have to be removed and replaced.
This is just one area that keeps the commercialization of micro-LEDs a less than near-term realization, which makes us doubtful that recent estimates as to the growth of the micro-LED large display market are realistic.. The only factor in favor of such large incremental gains would be the extremely high cost of such devices, rather than high unit volumes, as the sale of units that cost upwards of $75,000 could boost micro-LED industry revenue with relatively few units, however that goes against what is necessary for the industry to grow as unit volume is necessary to support the development of a substantial micro-LED infrastructure. While we present the data below, we have a less optimistic view of how quickly the micro-LED industry will generate revenue over the next few years, and while we would like to be proven wrong, we take the low road when it comes to the development of new technologies in the display space. We believe it will happen, but perhaps not as quickly as Trendforce expects.
Some of the issues concerning the cost structure of the micro-LED production process have to do with moving the vast number of ultra-small LED structures from a wafer to a substrate, but making that process even more complex is the necessity to evaluate each micro-LEDs characteristics before they are moved, without doing damage. Once each of the almost 25m micro-LEDs needed for a 4K display have been characterized, which at the least would encompass brightness, color point, and electrical characteristics, after which those die that did not meet minimal standards would be marked as unusable and exempted from the transfer process. This means that the transfer process, which in most cases needs to be done in groups, would have to be able to skip those micro-LEDs that do not meet standards, making bulk transfers like stamping, considerably more difficult, or more complex at the next stage, where those under=performing micro-LEDs would have to be removed and replaced.
This is just one area that keeps the commercialization of micro-LEDs a less than near-term realization, which makes us doubtful that recent estimates as to the growth of the micro-LED large display market are realistic.. The only factor in favor of such large incremental gains would be the extremely high cost of such devices, rather than high unit volumes, as the sale of units that cost upwards of $75,000 could boost micro-LED industry revenue with relatively few units, however that goes against what is necessary for the industry to grow as unit volume is necessary to support the development of a substantial micro-LED infrastructure. While we present the data below, we have a less optimistic view of how quickly the micro-LED industry will generate revenue over the next few years, and while we would like to be proven wrong, we take the low road when it comes to the development of new technologies in the display space. We believe it will happen, but perhaps not as quickly as Trendforce expects.
Micro-LED Large-Sized Display Chip Market Forecast - Source: Trendforce
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