Next-Gen Display: MicroLEDs

https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/coming-soon-to-a-wrist-near-you-microled-displays

by rbanffy • 8 years ago

123 91 8 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

flyinfungi• 8 years ago

What is a reasonable time to see this in my next phone? 2020? Looks really cool, with the screen being the biggest battery hog I hope to see a bump in battery lasting through the day (otherwise we get thinner phones).

hristov• 8 years ago

It won't be on your phone by 2020. It is not clear whether it will ever be on your phone. The iphone 8 has about 3 million subpixels which will all have to be individually cut, tested and assembled on a display for a microled to work.

Or, alternatively, the display can be made from a whole wafer, which will cost about a thousand dollars for the raw materials and perhaps $5k for the finished display.

I know technology tends to advance a lot, but the advances required for microled to work seem really far fetched. Also, display technology does not advance as quickly as digital computation technology. Remember we have been talking about OLEDs for at least 20 years now and they are only now becoming mainstream.

This technology, if it ever works, will be for very small devices where brightness is very important but resolution is not that important. So smart glasses and smart watches. Even for those applications it is not at all certain that they will be able to bring the cost down sufficiently.

6d6b73• 8 years ago

It already works: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/01/11/samsungs-...

vanderZwan3• 8 years ago

I'm actually most excited by the transparency. If we get low-cost transparent displays, it will finally make finally make Ishii's clearboard an affordable possibility for remote collaboration.

http://tangible.media.mit.edu/project/clearboard/

gt_• 8 years ago

What am I missing? Couldn’t we just drag a low-opacity video player over an instance of Photoshop for the same effect?

vanderZwan3• 8 years ago

The camera has to be behind the screen and pointing through it

stevep98• 8 years ago

I was thinking about the transparent screens from Avatar

See: http://itsbeau.com/work/avatar/ (scroll down)

dbbk2• 8 years ago

I would love to have a transparent dashboard display on my desk. In fact I'd pay a lot of money for it.

eat_veggies• 8 years ago

The transparency aspect is so cool! They look like they'd be awesome for AR goggles, although I don't know enough about the optics to know if that'd be feasible. We may also be close to getting those Star Trek style clear displays! Exciting stuff.

leggomylibro• 8 years ago

I was actually wondering recently if you could do something like that with a small off-the-shelf TFT screen.

ILI9341 modules are less than $5 each, and have 16/18-bit color with typical resolutions of 240x320. You can separate the actual panel from its backlights and casing without damaging it if you're careful, so I was thinking of trying to maybe put one in a box for a sort of DIY projector or something.

But I'm also pretty sure there's some reason why it won't work; maybe the glass is too polarized, maybe the colors are too dim, etc.

olfox• 8 years ago

The panel will filter the incoming light; these displays emit light. With high transparency panels you could get something that works well when there is an external light source, although with worse color distorsion.

vanderZwan3• 8 years ago

People have been modding old overhead projectors with LCD screens for as long as universities have been throwing both away (so since early 2000s). Here is a recent example[0]. For some reason nobody seems to realise that you can just place a smarphone underneath it and use that. I mean, the principle is the same as this video[1] :P

I just got myself an abandoned one - the Karolinska Institute, where I work, is moving, and they are throwing away a lot of crap. I took one of the overhead projectors, stripped out the old 240 Watts lamp + cooling unit (to be replaced with a less energy-draining yet brighter LED panel from the inside. Perhaps even one of those that can be programmed to change colors).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXX2UkucO8w

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKL9_bdtHq0

opencl• 8 years ago

I've built an AR headset with a normal backlit LCD, fresnel lens, and a semi-transparent mirror. Not great but it works.

You can certainly build a DIY projector that way. Building a high quality projector is hard but a crappy one is very simple. If you jam an LCD between a light source and a lens at the right distances you will get an image. Slide projectors, camera lenses, magnifying glass lenses, even those fresnel page magnifier lenses work.

cr0sh• 8 years ago

You apparently missed the whole "100 inch TV" craze of the early 2000s...

ableal• 8 years ago

A phrase in the article made me look up the price of raw silicon wafers, but although there are articles mentioning scarcity and 20% price hikes in 2017 (e.g. https://semiengineering.com/silicon-wafers-ma-and-price-hike... ), they are rather coy about actual values.

Anyone has a ballpark figure for Si wafers? All I found quickly was a chart image mentioning around 3k USD ( http://semimd.com/blog/2014/05/16/st-licenses-28nm-fd-soi-to... )

utopcell5• 8 years ago

I'm not sure I see the "revolutionary" aspect of this. With displays, you don't need to make power consumption arbitrarily small. By Amdahl's law, you only need to make it a small percentage of the cpu (and wireless) consumption. In this respect, Sharp's transflective displays (that were found, for example, in the pebble watches,) were already resolving the power issue in the context of smartwatches.

kridsdale1• 8 years ago

All energy savings have value. You may argue relative significance, but a joule saved is a joule saved.

utopcell5• 8 years ago

Agreed on that, but it's hard to justify the "revolutionary" tag if the end-product only increases its battery life by 10 or 20%.

djrogers• 8 years ago

The revolution is in the amount of time the display can be on, and the amount of data it can display 24/7. That is currently the big knock on most smartwatches - you have to move your wrist to activate the display and see the time. If that barrier is removed, it is revolutionary.

utopcell5• 8 years ago

The Sharp displays on pebbles were always on though.

nradov• 8 years ago

The displays on Garmin smartwatches are always on. However they're reflective displays so you have to activate the backlight to see them in the dark.

grahamburger• 8 years ago

Both of the Android (WearOS I guess now) smart watches that I've personally used have had always on displays and 2-3 day battery life. Maybe this is just an iWatch or whatever it's called problem? It does seem like whenever I see one of those mini iPhones strapped to someone's wrist it's blank.

mikestew• 8 years ago

"Most smartwatches"? I can think of only one, and that's the primary reason I have a Garmin instead of an Apple Watch. Other than Apple, I can't think of another smart watch that requires one to make a wrist motion in order for the time to be displayed.

yjftsjthsd-h• 8 years ago

In phones, at least, I was rather under the impression that display did dwarf the entire SoC+radio?

Someone2• 8 years ago

Firstly, these displays promise brighter colors and a wider gamut.

Secondly, you only get long battery life in a small package one tiny step at a time, and you want them, either to increase battery life or to make smaller watches. The latter is particularly hard. A typical smart watch is around 10 mm thick, nowadays, 2 or so of which are taken by the display and the back panel. So, if you want to make it 8 mm thick, you lose 25% of inner volume and, ballpark, the same on battery volume (taking into account that the battery is shielded, likely closer to 30%)

Finally, I’m not sure that transflective display is that low power if you want to frequently update the display. Looking at the data sheet of https://eu.mouser.com/new/Sharpsma/sharpmemorylcd/, page 14 lists power use of 15 μW on a static display, 50 μW on a display that updates at 1 Hz. Extrapolating, I get 2115 μW at 60 Hz, or about 2 mW. The capacity of a typical smartwatch battery is less than 1 Wh, so that display could display video for 500 hours or 20 days (rounded up a few times)

utopcell5• 8 years ago

Wider gamut is what might be the differentiator here.

With respect to power consumption, the video codec would probably draw more than 100mW [1], and at that point, the 2mW display consumption would not matter.

[1] a 640x480@15fps hardware decoder draws 71mW. https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/classes/fa11/cse291-a/pdf/02/JSSC_st...

elihu• 8 years ago

Somewhere, there's an engineer saying to him/herself "we could use a low-energy CPU in this design, but there's no point because its power consumption is insignificant compared to the display".

cronjobma• 8 years ago

There was a time where I’d get super hyped when reading these kinds of promises. Transparent displays, foldable screens. Truth is, we’ve been seeing working prototypes at events like CES for more than 15 years. I’ve come to realize the mechanics of these companies are similar to the car industry. New technologies are presented for the same reason car companies present strange concept cars: PR

derefr2• 8 years ago

The weird thing is that we already have “foldable screens.” But all the phone makers have done with them is to give us slightly less bezel on our glass rectangles.

I’m wondering if this is a “flying car” thing—if actually handing consumers ultra-thin bendable (but not actually creasable) panels would be a dumb idea, because consumers would try to exceed their tolerances and break them too easily.

(This is also, I think, why we don’t see more optical cabling standards outside of the enterprise space. The average consumer can’t be trusted to install a glass-fibre cable run without breaking it; and when they break it, they’ll get angry, because glass-fibre cables still cost a lot of money. And plastic-fibre cabling, though more tolerant, is far less of an improvement over copper, especially in attenuation distance.)

bpicolo• 8 years ago

Bending and not-creasable sounds like a tough ask. Those tend to come hand in hand.

ccajas• 8 years ago

The weird thing is that we already have “foldable screens.” But all the phone makers have done with them is to give us slightly less bezel on our glass rectangles.

Also, aren't they used for curved TV screens and computer monitors?

dbbk2• 8 years ago

So are you saying that you want an actual foldable phone? Putting aside the technical challenges of getting the chassis and other components to also fold, I struggle to understand why this would be a desirable product.

bitL3• 8 years ago

These might be good for pro photographers, though right now I'd rather see affordable 300dpi A4-sized e-book reader with tablet pen and SD card slot to get rid of all my paperwork.

DenisM2• 8 years ago

There you go

https://remarkable.com

com2kid3• 8 years ago

Foldable screens have been real and orderable for several years.

There problem is, screens need a protective layer on top, and bendable glass tech hasn't caught up. You need to be able to embed a touch layer, have good optical clarity, be scratch resistant, and impart resistant.

I've, gently, played with production ready bendable LCDs. Then realized that they weren't practical for any of the sci-fi scenarios I had imagined.

jd20• 8 years ago

What about just curved displays? Like in a car, it seems there could be some interesting applications (screen embedded in windshield, or wrapped around the dashboard or center console). Is curved glass tech also a barrier, because I feel I've seen very few applications of curved displays other than TV's.

delecti• 8 years ago

any of the sci-fi scenarios I had imagined

This is what I don't get. It's entirely possible that I'm particularly unimaginative, but I can't even think of any devices with screens I'd want to bend. All of my devices bend exactly as much as I want them to: none (or at least negligibly).

blitmap• 8 years ago

I was excited circa 2016 for OLED displays in laptops but that seems to have died. They were only 2560x1440 panels - I was hoping for 2160p to follow.

viperscape• 8 years ago

I don't understand in general why OLED is taking so long to be mass produced for TVs and monitors. It's like just now becoming mainstream, with what seems like two actually purchasable products.

duckfruit• 8 years ago

Me too! I was so hyped up about it that I got myself a ThinkPad X1 Yoga with an OLED display. But wish I'd realized sooner that putting an amazing display in a shit laptop still leaves you with .... a shit laptop.

tobr• 8 years ago

I’m guessing that “photo” is in fact a mock-up? Because it appears to show a screen that is able to occlude the background with both light and dark colors, which is not consistent with the description of the technology.

ggm2• 8 years ago

If it turns out its a mockup, that would be very sad. I feel slightly misled.

rebuilder• 8 years ago

A reverse image search turns up what appears to be the photo used as the background for the picture in the article, so yes, it seems to be a mockup.

xt00• 8 years ago

I hope they start with small array counts and build up from there.. you can imagine them having a "super bright super low power small display with 200x400 pixels" actually being useful in plenty of places.. then build up from there step by step.. So if AR is that application then, great. But don't try to jump from barely manufacturable to 4k2k VR display as your first step.. sort of like Lytro -- they just were like, "yea we just need to be able to make the densest highest quality and highest lens count micro lens array in the world to be successful!" My advice to the microLED people.. start small.. no pun intended, but yea.. don't try to hit a grand slam on day 1.

CharlesW• 8 years ago

My advice to the microLED people.. start small..

To your point, reports are that Apple is starting with Apple Watch.

tunesmith• 8 years ago

I wonder how much this would increase the battery life of an Apple Watch?

wrycoder• 8 years ago

Dream on, they’ll make it thinner

Cookingboy• 8 years ago

That's actually my number gripe about the Apple Watch, it's a bit too thick, and I don't have a problem with its battery life.

I'm totally fine with Apple prioritize form over function when it comes to wearable, after all, I don't buy mechanical watches for their "functions".

pilif• 8 years ago

They might. But over the last 3 generations they made them thicker and about tripled the battery life.

derefr2• 8 years ago

From a bit of googling just now, it seems that LEDs are effectively “two-way” devices: they emit light, but they can also sense light—just like the way that any loudspeaker is also fundamentally a microphone.

Which leads me to wonder: would a microLED array make a better camera input than current CCDs?

83457• 8 years ago

Sounds like a pretty good idea for a tv display.

taejavu• 8 years ago

Something something, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

steve192• 8 years ago

Interesting idea,although consider density. A Micro 4/3 camera sensor used on the popular Panasonic GH5 video camera is tiny but captures 4k video, displayed on screens far far larger.

Micro LEDs would need to be far, far smaller to be used as sensors.

p1esk3• 8 years ago

Why?

ghobs91• 8 years ago

If so, this could allow front facing cameras and webcams to be placed dead center of the screen, allowing 0 bezels without awkward camera placement like Dell XPS has.

p1esk3• 8 years ago

The entire screen would have to serve as a sensor, the pictures will have the same resolution as the screen.

ggm2• 8 years ago

if google glasses launched after this technology was ubiquitous...

dev_throw• 8 years ago

The second approach to microLED displays seems absurd on the face of it, yet it has the potential to work in smart-watch screens and larger displays. It involves dicing up wafers into individual microLEDs, making sure they’re all working perfectly, and transferring each one to its proper place on the display (not necessarily in that order). A 42-mm Apple Watch has roughly 120,000 pixels, each one of three colors, so that might mean some 360,000 microLEDs. “You need a technology that can transfer 30,000 LEDs per second for a consumer application,” says Virey.

Not sure if I understand this correctly, do they mean moving micro-LEDs during the manufacturing process, or when the device is being used? If it is the latter, it seems ridiculously cool!

andmarios• 8 years ago

Samsung has already demonstrated a MicroLED TV, LG is also on the wagon, yet the article fails to mention at all any of these big display companies and keeps going on about Apple and how it competes with Google and a few startups in the space.

Disappointed that this article has IEEE's brand.

Next-Gen Display: MicroLEDs

Related Stories