On January 6, 2025, the Global Procurement Matchmaking Conference and 2025 Shenzhen Lighting and Display Engineering Industry Association (SLDA) Annual Meeting was held at the Delux International Hotel in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. The event brought together industry-leading companies and experts to discuss the future trends in the display and lighting sectors. During the event, the Mini-LED / Micro-LED Display Application Technology Summit took place, where Mr. Dong Xiaobiao, Technical Director of Chengdu Vistar Optoelectronics Co., Ltd., delivered a keynote speech titled “Opportunities and Challenges of TFT-based Micro-LED Display Technology“. He provided an in-depth analysis of the vast application prospects and technical bottlenecks of Micro-LED technology and shared the latest progress made by Vistar Optoelectronics in advancing the industrialization of TFT-based Micro-LED display technology.
The Vast Application Prospects of Micro-LED Display Technology
At the summit, Mr. Dong Xiaobiao elaborated on the application prospects, current challenges, and technological breakthroughs made by Chengdu Vistar Optoelectronics in Micro-LED technology. He emphasized that Micro-LED technology has the potential to become one of the core platform technologies of future display technologies. Compared to traditional LCD and OLED, Micro-LED shows significant technological advantages in terms of high brightness, high reliability, and small pixel ratio. The application prospects of Micro-LED are particularly promising in areas such as high brightness, flexible displays, transparent screens, and free-form splicing.
Mr. Dong Xiaobiao pointed out that Micro-LED technology could effectively address several pain points faced by existing mainstream display technologies, especially in large-size displays, consumer electronics, and micro-displays. In large-size display applications, Micro-LED can significantly improve image quality, offering high resolution, low cost, and zero bezels. In particular, the demand for Micro-LEDs with pixel pitches below P0.9 is growing rapidly, with an annual growth rate expected to exceed 40%. These devices are widely applied in command and control, meetings, and advertising fields.
However, traditional large-size display technologies, such as projectors and LCD, still face issues of low brightness, large seams, and high costs, while OLED faces challenges with shorter lifespans. The emergence of Micro-LED offers new possibilities to overcome these issues, especially in terms of image quality, seamless splicing, and cost advantages.
Technical Challenges Faced by Micro-LED Technology
Despite the immense potential of Micro-LED technology, Mr. Dong Xiaobiao noted that the technology has yet to achieve large-scale mass production, primarily due to the following technical challenges:
- LED Performance Issues: The luminous efficacy and uniformity of Micro-LEDs have not yet met the standards required for high-quality displays. Currently, the uniformity of LED wafers is about 60%, and the wavelength uniformity is around 12 nanometers, which cannot meet the requirements for high-end display applications. Therefore, improving uniformity has become a key technical focus at this stage.
- Mass Transfer Technology Challenges: Micro-LED display devices require mass transfer technology to transfer LEDs from the wafer to the TFT backplane. While this process has modular characteristics that ease some manufacturing difficulties, challenges still exist in terms of LED alignment and yield control.
- Defective Pixel Repair Issues: During LED screening and repair, although most issues can be resolved, some defective pixels and dead LEDs may still persist, especially in the manufacturing of large-size displays. Ensuring that every LED works correctly and avoiding defective pixels is a critical challenge in the mass production process.
- Seam Issues: The seam problem of Micro-LED display devices, particularly when using glass substrates, is a major challenge due to the fragility of glass substrates. Protecting the substrate from damage during the splicing process is crucial. Moreover, due to differences in blackness and edge blackness, small seams are often unavoidable, affecting the overall display quality, particularly in large screen splicing.
- Viewing Angle Issues: Micro-LED technology may experience screen splitting at large viewing angles, a phenomenon that becomes more apparent under certain conditions. To address this challenge, Vistar Optoelectronics adopted a mold layer processing technique to ensure that each LED’s light distribution is consistent, effectively resolving the screen splitting issue at wide viewing angles.
Technological Breakthroughs and Solutions
In response to these challenges, Chengdu Vistar Optoelectronics has successfully overcome several key technical difficulties through technological innovation, making significant progress:
- Uniformity Optimization: Vistar Optoelectronics adopted a Mini-LED-like mixed Bin+Demura technology. By leveraging big data analysis and algorithm optimization, LEDs with similar wavelengths and brightness are mixed, significantly improving the wafer uniformity from 60% to 98%, while narrowing the wavelength range from 12 nanometers to less than 2 nanometers.
- Defective Pixel Repair: To ensure zero-defect products, Vistar Optoelectronics employs an efficient multi-repair technology. Through precise screening and repair, every LED operates correctly, ensuring that the LEDs transferred to the display screen are nearly free of defects, guaranteeing perfect display quality.
- Seam Control: To address the seam problem, Vistar Optoelectronics deliberately designed protective margins for glass substrates and optimized the edge pixel structure, established optical characterization standards, and enhanced the protection of the glass sidewalls and encapsulation materials. As a result, the seams were successfully controlled to within 20μm, making them nearly invisible to the naked eye.
- Viewing Angle Consistency: By optimizing the LED light distribution and employing mold layer processing techniques, Vistar Optoelectronics resolved the screen splitting issue at wide viewing angles, ensuring consistent light distribution from each LED, thus avoiding distortion of the visual effect.
Industrialization Progress and Outlook
Based on these technological breakthroughs, Chengdu Vistar Optoelectronics‘ Micro-LED industrialization project has made significant progress and has officially entered mass production. As part of its first batch of mass-produced products, Vistar Optoelectronics launched the world’s first 135-inch P0.7 TFT-based Micro-LED splicing screen. This splicing screen boasts ultra-high brightness (1500 nits), accurate color reproduction (98% DCI-P3 standard), and exceptional splicing experience (physical seam ≤ 0.1mm). It is widely used in high-end meetings, command and control centers, exhibitions, and home theater settings.
Additionally, Vistar Optoelectronics has spearheaded the establishment of the China Micro-LED Strategic Alliance, collaborating with 33 companies and research institutions to drive innovation in Micro-LED technology and the synergistic development of the industrial chain, helping to accelerate the advancement of China’s Micro-LED industry.
Looking ahead, Vistar Optoelectronics will continue to strengthen its cooperation with upstream and downstream enterprises, integrate resources, and drive Micro-LED technology toward higher performance, broader applications, and lower costs. The company is eager to collaborate with more industry partners to explore future development opportunities and provide superior visual experiences for global users.
Conclusion
In his speech, Mr. Dong Xiaobiao emphasized that despite the challenges facing Micro-LED technology, with continuous technological innovation and industry collaboration, Chengdu Vistar Optoelectronics is actively advancing the commercialization of this technology, bringing revolutionary changes to the industry. In the future, Micro-LED technology will offer a better display experience for global users and further drive the innovation of display technologies.
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