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I thought MicroLED was not really ready to compete outside a TV-sized form factor due to the difficulty & costs to manufacture it at competitive resolution dens

I thought MicroLED was not really ready to compete outside a TV-sized form factor due to the difficulty & costs to manufacture it at competitive resolution density for phones/tablets? Has that changed substantially since Apple cancelled it's MicroLED project for the Apple watch?

porphyra 2y ago
yea it seems that microled is good at either being really big (110" TVs) or really small (VR headsets), but nothing in between yet.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ivewonyoung 2y ago
  > or really small (VR headsets) That's MicroOLED in the Apple Vision Pro, not MicroLED. Confusing, I know.
  - porphyra 2y ago
    I'm not talking about micro OLED. I'm talking about microled which is indeed made in small chips with VR and AR as the target market. For example the recently announced Meta Orion is said to use microled [1]. At the recent microled connect conference there were lots of VR/AR focused talks [2]. [1] https://www.microled-info.com/meta-announces-10000-ar-glasses-powered-microled-microdisplays https://www.microled-info.com/meta-announces-10000-ar-glasse... [2] https://www.microledconnect.com/current-agenda https://www.microledconnect.com/current-agenda
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      Er, no. It's not shipping today for anything smaller than 8 foot TVs, and doesn't have a path. It's been 5 years away for at least a decade. OP is referencing Apple Watch cancellation because that was Apple throwing in the towel in microLED after a decade of investment, making it likely no one expects it to be solved soon. [1] Facebook is using a MicroLED projector and expressly says the display is an unknown unknown, because they can't ship this one if they wanted to. The failure rates are too high (see manufacturing process in [2]). [2] has been happening for at least 8 years. It'd be awesome for VR, but that's the least likely near term option because right now it boils down to "manually place 8,294,400 pixels and if any have errors, do it again." Its shipping at eye-watering prices in Samsung TVs > 100" (read: have "huge" pixel sizes so they can be manually placed)
throwaway48476 2y ago
They're still doing pick and place with millions of individual LEDs.
- lightedman 2y ago
  Oh, no, we don't use pick and place for micro LED. We use LASER-Induced Forward Transfer - ie we blast the LED straight off the wafer and onto the screen substrate and precision-align it with another aimed laser pulse.
jjcm 2y ago
Manufacturing is still the biggest bottleneck, but resolution density is very achievable. Jade Bird Display is a manufacturer I follow as they make extremely dense, high refresh rate, high brightness microled displays for projector purposes: https://www.jb-display.com/ https://www.jb-display.com/. The main product they sell are monochrome 3.3mm 640x480 displays (1 million nits!), but they do have 2k resolution 5.6mm RGB displays: https://www.jb-display.com/company/127.html https://www.jb-display.com/company/127.html
- thfuran 2y ago
  Aren't the tiny displays manufactured all on a wafer, bypassing the need for assembling all the individual LED elements that causes problems for the TV-sized displays?
  - enos_feedler 2y ago
    No. The pixels still need a transfer step

porphyra 2y ago

yea it seems that microled is good at either being really big (110" TVs) or really small (VR headsets), but nothing in between yet.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ivewonyoung 2y ago
> or really small (VR headsets) That's MicroOLED in the Apple Vision Pro, not MicroLED. Confusing, I know.
- porphyra 2y ago
  I'm not talking about micro OLED. I'm talking about microled which is indeed made in small chips with VR and AR as the target market. For example the recently announced Meta Orion is said to use microled [1]. At the recent microled connect conference there were lots of VR/AR focused talks [2]. [1] https://www.microled-info.com/meta-announces-10000-ar-glasses-powered-microled-microdisplays https://www.microled-info.com/meta-announces-10000-ar-glasse... [2] https://www.microledconnect.com/current-agenda https://www.microledconnect.com/current-agenda
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    Er, no. It's not shipping today for anything smaller than 8 foot TVs, and doesn't have a path. It's been 5 years away for at least a decade. OP is referencing Apple Watch cancellation because that was Apple throwing in the towel in microLED after a decade of investment, making it likely no one expects it to be solved soon. [1] Facebook is using a MicroLED projector and expressly says the display is an unknown unknown, because they can't ship this one if they wanted to. The failure rates are too high (see manufacturing process in [2]). [2] has been happening for at least 8 years. It'd be awesome for VR, but that's the least likely near term option because right now it boils down to "manually place 8,294,400 pixels and if any have errors, do it again." Its shipping at eye-watering prices in Samsung TVs > 100" (read: have "huge" pixel sizes so they can be manually placed)

throwaway48476 2y ago

They're still doing pick and place with millions of individual LEDs.

lightedman 2y ago
Oh, no, we don't use pick and place for micro LED. We use LASER-Induced Forward Transfer - ie we blast the LED straight off the wafer and onto the screen substrate and precision-align it with another aimed laser pulse.

jjcm 2y ago

Manufacturing is still the biggest bottleneck, but resolution density is very achievable. Jade Bird Display is a manufacturer I follow as they make extremely dense, high refresh rate, high brightness microled displays for projector purposes: https://www.jb-display.com/ https://www.jb-display.com/. The main product they sell are monochrome 3.3mm 640x480 displays (1 million nits!), but they do have 2k resolution 5.6mm RGB displays: https://www.jb-display.com/company/127.html https://www.jb-display.com/company/127.html

thfuran 2y ago
Aren't the tiny displays manufactured all on a wafer, bypassing the need for assembling all the individual LED elements that causes problems for the TV-sized displays?
- enos_feedler 2y ago
  No. The pixels still need a transfer step