According to LEDinside's latest report, "2Q18 Micro LED Next Generation Display Technology Market Report - Miniature Projection AR & VR Market Trend Analysis," a comparative analysis of light sources for micro-projection technology is presented, due to the high brightness of Micro LED. , Power saving and can be made to miniaturize the light machine module, when the Micro LED technology is mature, will have the opportunity to become the new mainstream of display technology.
Augmented Reality (AR) is actuated by the position and angle of the camera image and added with image analysis technology to allow the virtual world on the screen to interact with the real world. The main application is business. And education-related applications are mainly presented to the market in the form of Smart Eyewear products. LEDinside estimates that the total shipments of AR products will reach 4 million units in 2025, and the percentage of products using Micro LED projection technology will reach 18%.
What are the advantages of AR products using Micro LED technology? First of all, AR products are relatively large in size and weight and must be used comfortably. Therefore, the projection technology uses Micro Display to display images or videos. The pixels are integrated into a monolithic integrated circuit module, where the projection technologies LCOS and DLP require additional light source mechanisms to generate images. As for the Micro OLED, which emits light directly on the integrated circuit pixel, it can reduce the volume of the light source mechanism and reduce the overall weight, but the brightness is relatively low and is easily influenced by the external ambient light to reduce the display contrast effect. As a result, it is also an emissive source, but Micro LED technology with better brightness and contrast than Micro OLED will eventually win.
However, Micro LED's AR miniature projection products still face many challenges at this stage. Due to the close-up display, the pixels in the monitor must be smaller, and the resolution PPI must be over 2000 to cause no resolution problems. With regard to the development of Micro LED technology, Micro LED epitaxy and chip size challenges still need to be overcome, and there are also challenges in transfer, wafer bonding, color conversion, and detection.
According to LEDinside analysis, the corresponding chip size will change according to different resolutions on the one-inch display module. This will increase the difficulty of product transfer process, and therefore consider the initial yield rate is not high. Under the circumstances, the estimated cost will also increase with the increase of resolution. With the transfer technology of UPH (Unit Per Hour) 500K, the 2K and 16K resolutions will have a spread of 10 times, and if the transfer technology with UPH20KK will have a 5 times price difference. Therefore, how to overcome cost barriers will depend on the collective wisdom of the relevant manufacturers of the overall Micro LED camp.