The 18th Gaogong LED Industrial Summit Forum Held Successfully—Mini LED Industry Is In the Ascendant

The 18^th Gaogong LED Industrial Summit Forum was held as scheduled on July 2^nd to 3^rd, 2020, hosted by Doctor Zhang Xiaofei, the CEO of Gaogong. “Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the market has been deadlocked. LED industry came across a crisis but will usher an adjustment in the second half of this year. LED display market is filled with unlimited opportunities. Small pitch LED, Mini LED display and Mini LED backlighting are in a growing stage and Micro LED is still in an early stage.” said Doctor Zhang. He further clarified that from the product point of view, Mini LED packaging has gone into mass production phase, Micro LED is developing actively, pushing by chip and display suppliers especially while packaging manufacturers are still waiting and groping. From the market point of view, Mini LED display is in small-lot production and applied mainly in high-end conference and government projects. 

        Secretary-general of China Optics and Optoelectronics Manufactures Association LED Display Division Hong Zhen delivered an address themed “New Driving Force of Display Technology”. “Data shows that Mini LED display will be applied in TV, mobile phone automotive display and digital display (commercial advertisement and display, etc.)”, which in total will generate 1.07 billion USD in sales in 2025 as estimated. Micro LED will be applied in TV, mobile phone, AR/VR, automotive display, wearable electronics and digital display, which in total will generate 3.5 billion USD in sales in 2023 as estimated.” Addressed Hong, “the integration of cross-industry technology will bring diversified technical routes, which will become the new driving force of display technology”

       The director of Future Display Research Center of Xiamen Changelight Co., Ltd Ke Zhijie deemed that the core technology of Mini LED lies in flip and small sized chip, and mainly applied on LCD backlighting and small pitch display screen. “The main limit of the development of Mini LED application is, in essence, the cost. And cost-down relies on technology progress, including yield rate improving, technical improvement on substrate and die bonding process.” According to Ke Zhijie, the packaging manufacturers are expecting new technology which can brings higher efficiency, higher yield rate and lower cost. 

       The VP of HC Semitek Corporation Wang Jianmin thinks that the technical trend for TV is to make the products slimmer, energy saving with larger size, higher resolution, wider color gamut, HDR. The cost of LCD and OLED increases as the TV goes bigger. When the TV size reaches 100 inch, the cost rises sharply. Mini LED is in urgent need for backlighting area, which becomes an important driving force for the industrialization of Mini LED. The potential of Mini LED backlighting market can’t be underestimated as it is estimated that the total sales value TV backlighting with Mini LED will reach 8.2 billion USD, 20% of which is the cost of Mini LED chip.  

       As the director of R&D center of Shenzhen Kinglight Co.,LTD Doctor Shao Pengrui analyzed, “the development trend of Micro LED display is definitely more than RGB, it’s full color realized by color conversion. The progress of LED chip manufacturing, chip transferring, IC driving, dead pixel repairing and backlighting board are slow, and it will take at least 5 years to realize the industrialization.” With the advantages of low cost and wide application area, LCD account for 90% in tradition and large size display market, reaching 130 billion USD in sales volume. However, it do has disadvantages in terms of color and splicing. Thought OLED has the great advantage in color rendition, its high cost in splicing is daunting for the industry. In contrast, LED has no limit in terms of splicing though its resolution is low. As technology develops and product upgrades, LED can get the highest PPI. In this way, LED market is a market with trillions of USD potential. 

       “Whether it’s Mini LED display or Mini LED backlighting, the key factors are chip, substrate and equipment.” said Yuan Manbao, the VP of Shenzhen Xinyichang Technology Co., Ltd. A Die bonding equipment for Mini LED packaging launched by Xinyichang, realized a highly-effective and once for all DB process by mass transferring to move all RGB chips at the same time to one carrier. In terms of fluid assembly and transfer technology, the chips are sub-packaged in the fluid, and the dispersion and arrangement of the Mini LEDs are realized by controlling the flow of the fluid and the electrostatic force on the temporary substrate, and finally transfer the Mini LED chips to the packaging substrate. Compared with the Pick & Place technology, the laser technology skips the Pick process and transfers the unstripped LED chip substrate directly to the backlighting board, and then uses the excimer laser technology to irradiate the gallium nitride sheet on the growth interface, and then Metal gallium and nitrogen are generated by ultraviolet exposure, which achieves parallel transfer and realizes precise optical array. But Pick & Place technology is still the most effective die bonding method in the commercial mass production of Mini LED display devices. 

       Pan Xiaoling, product director of the commercial display product line of Dahua Co., Ltd., believes that LED display companies should seize policy opportunities and empower smart cities through solutions such as smart city visualization, city operation centers, smart city conference display control, and smart monitoring. The development of front-end technology has surpassed that of display, including the future TV industry and live streaming industry. As the pixels become higher and higher, the requirements for the screen are actually higher and higher. Therefore, front-end video motivates the development of the LED display industry into Mini and Micro area.

When referring to the value and status of the Mini LED packaging industry, Sun Pingru, general manager of Jufei Optoelectronics Technology Center, believes that the current panel factory LCD production capacity is relatively large, in order to consume a part of the glass substrate, they must use glass for Mini backlight and Mini direct display . The cooperation between panel makers and chip makers is beneficial and harmless to them. The key is to see if they can surpass the powerful packaging factories. Mini backlighting covers glass substrates and PCB substrates. We all exist in this part of the market, so I think it is difficult to skip the intermediate packaging process.

According to Liu Chuanbiao of Zhaochi Guangyuan, Zhaochi has a traditional large-size technical foundation and customer base, not only RGB, but also Mini. It’s normal that competition and cooperation coexist and we cannot stop it. Generally speaking, we insist on making enough preparations in terms of technology, including Mini RGB technology.

Wu Zhenzhi of Aoto Electronics analyzed that some processes in LED display industry will be removed. This is an inevitable trend. In the end, it is the power of the industry which decides whom cooperates with whom. Now our all-in-one products are cooperating with packaging factories.

HC Semitek Wang Jianmin said: Our mission is to do a good job of chips with our heart and develop together with like-minded partners. Looking at your different technical routes, I think packaging will still exist in certain product areas.

The forum ended with Xiaofei's speec: There seems to be a hurdle between Mini to Micro, which is quite big.

?