Comparison and future of OLED display technology and Micro LED display techno...

The LCD TV that dominates the world may withdraw from the stage of history. I recently took the time to read some books and talk about the future screens.

When I was a kid, the screen was CRT technology, which was a very thick and heavy TV.

Bigger picture tube technology was eliminated, and three technical schools appeared.

One is a rear projection TV, one is a plasma TV, and the other is an LCD TV.

Rear projection TV is a TV display technology that integrates a screen and a projection system.

It was very expensive back then, but it was quickly eliminated.

I won’t elaborate on plasma TVs. They used to compete with LCD TVs. They were the rivals of LCD TVs.

Japan's Matsushita has spent money on plasma TVs, while the LCD camp is Samsung and Sharp.

At the beginning, it was not known who would win.

Everyone knows the subsequent results. The plasma was completely exploded and completely withdrawn from the market.

Then the world entered the LCD era.

Liquid crystal display, abbreviated as LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) in English.

After entering the LCD era, the Japanese were able to participate in the game at first, but later they were completely defeated by the Koreans using the "counter-cycle butcher", and the Japanese gradually withdrew from the LCD screen manufacturing market.

South Koreans dominate the family, the most powerful are Samsung and LG.

Our country is also afraid that the Koreans will become a monopoly when they become bigger. In strategic considerations, we must have our own LCD manufacturing company.

However, the Koreans are very fierce, and the "counter-cyclical butcher knife" has been tried and tested repeatedly. In order to counter its butcher's knife, we have also adopted the government to provide large subsidies to enterprises to help them survive the cold winter of the counter-cyclical. This company is BOE, so be careful not to miss the word "fang".

BOE has been the subject of complaints for a long time, and investors who have bought it know best that is "too difficult."

The money earned over the years is not as much as the state subsidies. From a business perspective, it is not as good as it was at the beginning, but there is a reasonable explanation for all of this: strategic considerations.

The LCD era lasted for a long time, and it has continued to the present.

However, in recent years, high-end TVs have no longer used liquid crystal display, but adopted OLED display technology.

OLED has a small market share at the beginning, and has basically occupied the high-end market by 2020.

OLED is the abbreviation of Organic Light-Emitting Diode (Organic Light-Emitting Diode), also known as organic electric laser display, is LED lamp beads self-luminous.

OLED display technology has the advantages of self-luminescence, wide viewing angle, almost infinitely high contrast, low power consumption, and extremely high response speed.

But the cost is high, and the price is naturally more expensive than LCD TVs.

High cost and expensive selling are disadvantages, but being able to occupy the high-end must have advantages that LCD can't match.

advantage:

(1) OLED is self-luminous, which can ensure that the picture is not distorted and can realize wide-angle viewing.

(2) The material is relatively light and thin, which can make the TV thinner and adapt to the consumer psychology of the Chinese people. Thinner is also a development trend.

(3) To adapt to the extreme cold climate, northern friends are the first choice. The liquid crystal is not resistant to extreme cold.

(4) The color is fuller because of the high contrast. Color is of course very important.

(5) The plasticity is very good. It can be carried by materials such as plastic and resin, so it is portable and convenient for transportation. In contrast, the rigidity of the liquid crystal is high, otherwise the screen will be broken at any time for you to see.

At present, OLED dominates the high-end, and liquid crystal (LCD) dominates the low-end.

The next thing to appear is the protagonist that I will write today.

It is also the most worth seeing place in this article.

The protagonist has not yet been mass-produced, she comes from the future.

In a few years, she will enter the civilian market in large numbers, and may even completely subvert the current OLED and LCD.

It is Micro LED.

Like OLED, it is composed of light-emitting diodes.

This means that both are self-luminous screens. Each red, green, and blue sub-pixel emits light on its own, unlike LCD screens that require a dedicated backlight.

Micro LED has many properties the same as OLED, such as contrast and color performance, as well as being very thin and light.

The real difference lies in the composition of the LED material.

I just mentioned that the O in OLED stands for Organic, which is not organic for vegetables and fruits, but refers to the use of organic materials in light-emitting components.

Micro LED is different. This technology uses inorganic gallium nitride (GaN) materials in the light-emitting part.

This inorganic material provides higher brightness than OLED, which is up to 30 times higher in theory.

It is better than OLED display in terms of response speed, contrast and color saturation.

Since the LED material is reduced and placed in the array, the display density of the Micro LED screen can be further broken.

In theory, if the iPhone 11 uses Micro LED, the display density can be increased several times compared to the current one.

In addition, using inorganic materials, Micro LED will not have the problem of short life of OLED screen. Push adults who bought Sony’s OLED screen encountered a single lamp bead failure. Sony OLED is currently the best on the market, and it is still the case.

At the same time, Micro LED also reduces the requirements for polarization and encapsulation layer, which can make the panel thinner.

Talking about energy consumption, the so-called low energy consumption of OLED is the data made by reducing the white screen and high-brightness display in the laboratory.

I have a power outlet in my house, and the measured white screen is always on, and the power consumption will increase significantly.

Micro LED is a large number of micro LED arrays. Each pixel is driven independently. While achieving high brightness, high resolution, and color saturation, the energy consumption is much lower than that of OLED and LCD. Does energy consumption matter? The difference between charging your mobile phone once a day and charging it once every 3 days.

Micro LED energy consumption is about 90% lower than LCD and 50% lower than OLED.

Micro LED still has many technical difficulties to overcome.

I read the paper. The most difficult thing is "micro-intensification". The image point is to have 100 people stand on a Go board at the same time. The people are LED chips and lamp beads, and the board is the panel. The laboratory must be able to do it now, but the cost is very high. If it is to be mass-produced and widely used for civilian use, it will involve a cost issue.

The current situation is that Samsung launched a Micro LED TV (named TheWallMicroLED TV) last year, which belongs to the concept stage and the technology is not mature enough.

Apple is the first to carry microLED on the new generation of Apple Watch.

Apple Watch equipped with microLED, if you have used it, you should know that it can last a long time with a single charge.

The microLED on Apple Watch is made by Apple in Taiwan's laboratory.

Just remember Taiwan, I will talk about doing this Taiwanese company (Taiwan Jingdian) in a moment.

The latest development on the mainland is the establishment of a joint venture company between Leyard Group and Taiwan Jing Electronics Company, the registered place is located in Liangxi District, Wuxi City.

In the future, the two parties will build the world's first base in Wuxi that uses mass transfer technology to achieve mass production of the smallest size Micro LED display products, thereby greatly advancing the development of the Micro LED market.

Leyard said that Taiwan Epistar pioneered the world's smallest pitch and smallest single RGB LED packaging technology. This time the two parties established a joint venture company, which will invest RMB 1 billion in the early stage to build a base for Micro LED display projects. The project includes the entire industrial chain of Micro LED design, R&D, production, and sales in the mainland. The construction of the base is planned to be implemented at the end of December 2019, and will be officially put into production in 2020 (to be completed in 2023), and annual sales are expected to reach 5 billion yuan in the future.

The mass market application of Micro LED may not be far away from us.

Finally, I write a feeling that science and technology are really changing with each passing day. I feel that I will be eliminated every minute if I don’t read books and learn. The future era requires lifelong learning.

In addition, the country has invested hugely in the LCD industry, and it has made a huge sum of money to finally support a BOE. But maybe because of the mistake of the technical route, the bamboo basket was finally wiped out. It is impossible for the liquid crystal to be completely replaced in a short time, because the liquid crystal still has a cost advantage, but what about a longer time? Just like who is still using a CRT TV set in the 90s, no one will use it no matter how low the cost is.

Although it is not certain whether the liquid crystal will come to an end, it is now certain that the liquid crystal has lost the high-end display market. Isn't this a sign?

Finally, I will add a few words. The counter-cyclical butcher of the LCD industry is based on the industry cycle where the panel size is getting bigger and bigger. The size of the current LCD panel has almost reached its limit. 80 to 100 inches is already the ceiling. It is not that you can no longer cut it, but the LCD screen is fragile. If the size exceeds this limit, it is inconvenient to transport (high road damage rate) , The second is the inconvenience of packaging.

A larger size requires a better rigid casing, and the screen will become thicker and thicker, otherwise it will not be possible in engineering. In addition, the larger size puts a huge investment in the production line.

All the problems encountered by liquid crystals can be solved by the integration of LED self-luminescence.

Let me put a sentence here, human beings will not make 200-inch LCD TVs. It is not that they can't make them, but they have no market value.