David Savastano, Editor08.18.21
There are a range of technologies that are being used in displays. One of these is quantum dots; Samsung the leading producer in this segment, with Nanosys the leading supplier of quantum dot light emitting materials and technology.
There are many other technologies that are potentially dominant in displays. OLED is one; microLED and nanoLED are two others that are of significant interest, and these could be combined with other technologies.
With an eye on these opportunities, Nanosys recently announced the acquisition of glō, a leading technology company for microLED displays. This enhances Nanosys’ capabilities and technology offerings.
“Nanosys created a vibrant, growing marketplace for our proprietary quantum dot technology over the past two decades,” said Jason Hartlove, Nanosys president and CEO, in announcing the acquisition. “Combining the best quantum dot and microLED technologies allows Nanosys to unlock the disruptive potential of microLED by lowering production cost and maximizing performance. Together, we can create the smallest, brightest, lowest cost pixels that will enable microLED to penetrate the mainstream TV market and open the doors for new applications in AR, automotive and beyond.”
Prior to the acquisition, glō had invested more than $200 million in its technology.
Russell Kempt, VP of worldwide sales and marketing for Nanosys, noted that glō’ was spun out of NanoLund in Sweden in 2003 by Professor Lars Samuelson, a nanomaterials pioneer.
“The company developed highly efficient xGaN micro-LEDs based on unique methods and processes,” Kempt said. “Nanosys has been collaborating with glō for several years on color conversion for microLEDs, so we had first-hand experience of glō’s unique capabilities, working with their team and developing a close relationship. This is how our relationship evolved and how we decided to accelerate our work by bringing the two teams together.”
Kempt observed that Nanosys sees the future of display as being emissive.
We have been working on developing emissive display technologies like Electroluminescent QD or NanoLED and color conversion technology for OLEDs and microLEDs from day one,” Kempt said. “We see NanoLEDs as the ultimate future display technology. NanoLED will enable truly disruptive low temperature, low cost, solution processed manufacturing of displays with incredible performance.”
Kempt pointed out that Nanosys has made great progress in increasing NanoLED efficiency by more than 10x and lifetime by more than 100x over the last 18 months.
“At SID Display Week this year, we announced that our heavy metal free red emitters have now reached commercial requirements for brightness, color and lifetime,” he added. “We also saw a truly stunning 4K solution printed NanoLED TV demonstrated by our partner and investor BOE. We expect this technology will come to market in consumer products by 2025, several years sooner than we originally planned based on the great progress we have made over the past two quarters.
“However, microLED is much closer to entering the market and, indeed, we already see some of the first niche products out there in the form of ultra-high end TVs,” Kempt noted.” We believe there are other products that can be upgraded, and new applications, that will benefit from microLEDs in the near-term.”
glō brings a wide range of expertise to Nanosys and its customers.
“First, glō has world class epi and device capabilities,” said Kempt. “So, in terms of their ability to bring solutions to generate photons and get them out of the device, we’re right there with the best of the best.
“Second, we have full device integration capabilities and a very unique transfer capability that was developed by glō,” Kempt noted. “That allows us to transfer LEDs onto backplanes at very fine pitch, with high speed and low defectivity all at low temperature. This is critical for ensuring the xGaN LED and backplane materials, whether that is glass or silicon, have highly reliable interconnects and can be manufactured in a cost-competitive manner.
“By bringing together these unique capabilities– the quantum dot materials for color conversion, the epi and device capability and full device integration– in one organization, we can really accelerate the time to market for microLED and help solve several challenges for the display industry,” Kempt added.
Having a full range of technologies to offer display companies is an important advantage for Nanosys.
“The next generation of display devices are going to need to deliver a totally different set of performance criteria, orders of magnitude beyond technologies in the market today,” Kempt observed. “For applications like Augmented Reality (AR) to be successful, we’re going to need displays that can produce well over 100,000 nits at 10,000 ppi in a 0.1” display, for example. There’s just no path for Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) or organic LEDs (OLEDs) to get there so we see a critical role for microLED to play in enabling these new applications for the display industry.”
One of the challenges for microLED has been manufacturability.
“Due to a variety of issues, it has been impossible for anyone to produce small, bright, uniform pixels at pitches below 5 microns – especially for red,” Kempt reported. “Those ultra-small pixels are really needed for microLED to be successful because you need the resolution and, for larger panels like TVs, you need small pixels to help reduce the bill-of-material to make the economics work.
“The QD Color Conversion technology we first developed for QD-OLED displays is incredibly enabling for microLED,” he added. “By starting from a single-color blue or ultraviolet (UV) microLED emitter and patterning our red and green QDs on the devices, we can help solve the challenges that have been holding microLED back.”
Combining quantum dots with microLED and nanoLED is very promising, although it is also challenging. Kempt said that light extraction is an area Nanosys and glō are focused on.
“The physical implementation and processes to do so across the array are another, for example how to do the patterning in the presence of other structures for the microLED,” Kempt added. “It’s easy to draw the cartoon, but the actual implementation to ensure a nicely uniform radiation pattern given the dimensions creates opportunities for us to innovate in our material system for processability as well as at the device level.
“For example, we just announced a new heavy metal-free green QD material with a high absorption cross section and very narrow Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) at the SID meeting that we developed for this kind of color conversion, where we need a very thin layer of QDs which absorb all the stimulus photons,” he noted.
Nanosys believes that microLED has a few unique value propositions.
“These are brightness and pitch,” said Kempt. “You cannot pattern OLEDs down to 1µm and you cannot get more than 20k nits out of OLED. Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) and LCDs can’t get the brightness up either. For direct view, OLED may be a good solution. It’s a success story in watches and in VR headsets so far. 2000ppi is more than adequate and 1000 nits is also.
“But there are applications where that is not good enough and it never will be,” he added. “These are some of the obvious areas of opportunity but there are also many existing applications that will see benefit from microLED and nanoLED display technologies. We are looking forward to working with the industry to bring these new technologies to market.”
There are many other technologies that are potentially dominant in displays. OLED is one; microLED and nanoLED are two others that are of significant interest, and these could be combined with other technologies.
With an eye on these opportunities, Nanosys recently announced the acquisition of glō, a leading technology company for microLED displays. This enhances Nanosys’ capabilities and technology offerings.
“Nanosys created a vibrant, growing marketplace for our proprietary quantum dot technology over the past two decades,” said Jason Hartlove, Nanosys president and CEO, in announcing the acquisition. “Combining the best quantum dot and microLED technologies allows Nanosys to unlock the disruptive potential of microLED by lowering production cost and maximizing performance. Together, we can create the smallest, brightest, lowest cost pixels that will enable microLED to penetrate the mainstream TV market and open the doors for new applications in AR, automotive and beyond.”
Prior to the acquisition, glō had invested more than $200 million in its technology.
Russell Kempt, VP of worldwide sales and marketing for Nanosys, noted that glō’ was spun out of NanoLund in Sweden in 2003 by Professor Lars Samuelson, a nanomaterials pioneer.
“The company developed highly efficient xGaN micro-LEDs based on unique methods and processes,” Kempt said. “Nanosys has been collaborating with glō for several years on color conversion for microLEDs, so we had first-hand experience of glō’s unique capabilities, working with their team and developing a close relationship. This is how our relationship evolved and how we decided to accelerate our work by bringing the two teams together.”
Kempt observed that Nanosys sees the future of display as being emissive.
We have been working on developing emissive display technologies like Electroluminescent QD or NanoLED and color conversion technology for OLEDs and microLEDs from day one,” Kempt said. “We see NanoLEDs as the ultimate future display technology. NanoLED will enable truly disruptive low temperature, low cost, solution processed manufacturing of displays with incredible performance.”
Kempt pointed out that Nanosys has made great progress in increasing NanoLED efficiency by more than 10x and lifetime by more than 100x over the last 18 months.
“At SID Display Week this year, we announced that our heavy metal free red emitters have now reached commercial requirements for brightness, color and lifetime,” he added. “We also saw a truly stunning 4K solution printed NanoLED TV demonstrated by our partner and investor BOE. We expect this technology will come to market in consumer products by 2025, several years sooner than we originally planned based on the great progress we have made over the past two quarters.
“However, microLED is much closer to entering the market and, indeed, we already see some of the first niche products out there in the form of ultra-high end TVs,” Kempt noted.” We believe there are other products that can be upgraded, and new applications, that will benefit from microLEDs in the near-term.”
glō brings a wide range of expertise to Nanosys and its customers.
“First, glō has world class epi and device capabilities,” said Kempt. “So, in terms of their ability to bring solutions to generate photons and get them out of the device, we’re right there with the best of the best.
“Second, we have full device integration capabilities and a very unique transfer capability that was developed by glō,” Kempt noted. “That allows us to transfer LEDs onto backplanes at very fine pitch, with high speed and low defectivity all at low temperature. This is critical for ensuring the xGaN LED and backplane materials, whether that is glass or silicon, have highly reliable interconnects and can be manufactured in a cost-competitive manner.
“By bringing together these unique capabilities– the quantum dot materials for color conversion, the epi and device capability and full device integration– in one organization, we can really accelerate the time to market for microLED and help solve several challenges for the display industry,” Kempt added.
Having a full range of technologies to offer display companies is an important advantage for Nanosys.
“The next generation of display devices are going to need to deliver a totally different set of performance criteria, orders of magnitude beyond technologies in the market today,” Kempt observed. “For applications like Augmented Reality (AR) to be successful, we’re going to need displays that can produce well over 100,000 nits at 10,000 ppi in a 0.1” display, for example. There’s just no path for Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) or organic LEDs (OLEDs) to get there so we see a critical role for microLED to play in enabling these new applications for the display industry.”
One of the challenges for microLED has been manufacturability.
“Due to a variety of issues, it has been impossible for anyone to produce small, bright, uniform pixels at pitches below 5 microns – especially for red,” Kempt reported. “Those ultra-small pixels are really needed for microLED to be successful because you need the resolution and, for larger panels like TVs, you need small pixels to help reduce the bill-of-material to make the economics work.
“The QD Color Conversion technology we first developed for QD-OLED displays is incredibly enabling for microLED,” he added. “By starting from a single-color blue or ultraviolet (UV) microLED emitter and patterning our red and green QDs on the devices, we can help solve the challenges that have been holding microLED back.”
Combining quantum dots with microLED and nanoLED is very promising, although it is also challenging. Kempt said that light extraction is an area Nanosys and glō are focused on.
“The physical implementation and processes to do so across the array are another, for example how to do the patterning in the presence of other structures for the microLED,” Kempt added. “It’s easy to draw the cartoon, but the actual implementation to ensure a nicely uniform radiation pattern given the dimensions creates opportunities for us to innovate in our material system for processability as well as at the device level.
“For example, we just announced a new heavy metal-free green QD material with a high absorption cross section and very narrow Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM) at the SID meeting that we developed for this kind of color conversion, where we need a very thin layer of QDs which absorb all the stimulus photons,” he noted.
Nanosys believes that microLED has a few unique value propositions.
“These are brightness and pitch,” said Kempt. “You cannot pattern OLEDs down to 1µm and you cannot get more than 20k nits out of OLED. Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) and LCDs can’t get the brightness up either. For direct view, OLED may be a good solution. It’s a success story in watches and in VR headsets so far. 2000ppi is more than adequate and 1000 nits is also.
“But there are applications where that is not good enough and it never will be,” he added. “These are some of the obvious areas of opportunity but there are also many existing applications that will see benefit from microLED and nanoLED display technologies. We are looking forward to working with the industry to bring these new technologies to market.”