MicroLED

MicroLED (also spelt micro-LED), also known as mLED or μLED is a flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Compared to OLED displays, the inorganic (i.e. not based on carbon chains) nature of MicroLED gives a longer lifetime and allows them to display brighter images with minimal risk of screen burn-in, while it also offers compared to LED-backlit LCDs greatly reduced energy requirements, pixel-level light control and a high contrast ratio. The sub-nanosecond response time of MicroLED is also an advantage for 3D/AR/VR displays to minimise ghosting.

μLED technology was first invented in 2000 by the research group of Hongxing Jiang and Jingyu Lin of Texas Tech University while they were at Kansas State University. The first high-resolution and video-capable InGaN MicroLED display was realized in 2009 by Jiang, Lin and their colleagues via active driving of a microLED array by a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) IC.

MicroLED is an emerging technology and the market is expected to grow in the coming years. The technology is mostly tipped practically for wearables, such as smartwatches, but MicroLED's capability of high speed modulation has proposed it for chip-to-chip interconnect applications as well. Large commercial screens utilizing the technology started being offered in the late 2010s and the first MicroLED televisions for consumers were released in 2021, although manufacturing these displays still remains very expensive.