In recent years, there has been a rumor in the industry that "the world's display industry relies on China, and China's display industry relies on Shenzhen."
As a world-famous display industry center, Shenzhen brings together a complete industrial chain including display technology and supporting equipment, LED industry chain products, system integration, acousto-optical video integration and application, and has always attracted much attention. The International Smart Display and System Integration Exhibition (ISLE 2024) recently held at the Shenzhen International Convention and Exhibition Center ( Baoan New Hall) is like a grand competition of display products and technologies. Dahua, Uniview, Leyard, Unilumin, Absen, Lianjian, Ledman, Alto, Skyworth, BOE and other manufacturers all appeared with their latest achievements and technological breakthroughs in the display field. Focusing on this industry exhibition, the products and solutions that have attracted much attention are 8K Micro-LED, naked-eye 3D display, transparent Mini LED, special-shaped display, interactive display and other products and solutions. At the same time, diversified packaging technologies such as COB, GOB, and MIP have also become the focus of many manufacturers' displays. To this end, after visiting the exhibition, CPS reporters sorted out the new products and new technologies in the LED display industry and discussed the new development trends of the industry.
Small-pitch screens
"We are now making the small-pitch screen P0.4, which is the first in the industry." The person in charge of Ledman Optoelectronics' overseas department told the author confidently. It has to be said that at this year’s Optoelectronics Exhibition, the display of LED small-pitch screens was like a fight between gods. It is worth noting that as the LED display industry enters a critical period of transformation and upgrading, Mini/Micro LED small-pitch technology development and industrialization are advancing rapidly. As we all know, what the industry calls small-pitch LED displays are LED displays with a pitch of P2.5 (inclusive) or below.
However, as the application of LED screens becomes more and more widespread and costs decrease, more and more industries currently call them P2 or below. is the small spacing LED display. However, during this visit to the exhibition, the author saw that from P0.9, P0.7, P0.6 to P0.4, the pixel spacing of LED displays continued to decline. Ledman, Unilumin, Leyard, Abby Sen and others also exhibited their small-pitch LED displays at this exhibition. Data shows that among the current total market volume of indoor and outdoor LED displays, small-pitch products account for more than 40%, and prices are also declining. The market size of small-pitch LED display screens in mainland China will be 15.5 billion yuan in 2023, and the average price per square meter will drop from 44,200 yuan in the first quarter of 2020 to 13,900 yuan in the fourth quarter of 2023. At the same time, as technology becomes more mature and costs fall, LED small-pitch displays are being used in more display applications, from monitoring centers, data centers, conference rooms, exhibitions, etc. to XR Filming, theaters, sporting events and more continue to expand.
8K Micro-LED
From VCD's primary definition, DVD standard definition, 720 HD, 1080P full HD to 4K professional HD to 8K ultra-HD, every iteration of technology elevates the visual experience to a higher level.
With the rapid development of the ultra-high-definition video industry, its technological innovation has become increasingly active, and key links in the industry chain have continued to make breakthroughs, achieving a qualitative leap on the basis of "4K first, taking into account 8K". It can be said that many domestic manufacturers can provide corresponding support in multiple subdivisions such as front-end collection, production, distribution, transmission and presentation. The 8K ultra-high-definition video technology, with its high pixel density, delicate pictures, and rich colors, allows users to obtain a more realistic and clear audio-visual experience when watching video content such as film and television works and sports events. After all, 8K resolution is 7680*4320, which is 4 times that of 4K and 16 times that of 1080P. At ISLE 2024, reporters saw that Leyard, Ledman Optoelectronics, Xida Electronics and other manufacturers came with 8K Micro LED high-definition display products, attracting many domestic and foreign exhibitors.
In addition, Absen has brought a 12K Micro LED ultra-high-definition display, which adopts Absen HDR 10 optimization algorithm and has a peak brightness of 1200nits, which can perfectly present HDR video effects and reach the industry-leading level. Generally speaking, both 8K and 12K ultra-high-definition technology are far ahead in the world. However, it remains to be seen when it comes to actual application scenarios. The price of millions and tens of millions has become an obstacle to practical application.
Packaging technology
It is understood that the current packaging technologies of LED display screens are mainly SMD packaging,
COB packaging, and GOB packaging. Among them, SMD is a more traditional packaging technology, COB is the packaging technology that has been promoted in recent years, mainly used in small-pitch LED display series, and GOB packaging is an innovative breakthrough in SMD technology.
The SMD technology route is to package the light-emitting chips (wafers) into lamp beads, weld the lamp beads to the PCB board to form a unit module, and finally splice them into a whole LED screen. Therefore, SMD packaging technology is mature and cheap, but it is easy to cause lights to fall out or die during external collision or welding process.
The GOB technology route uses an advanced highly transparent resin to fill the gaps between LED lamp beads and maintain thermal conductivity without affecting image display. The LED module is moisture-proof, waterproof, dust-proof, impact-proof, and bump-proof. The protection is greatly enhanced. However, GOB packaging is more expensive when it solves the problem of lamp drop and increases waterproofness.
The MIP technology route is a technology for chip-level packaging of Mini/Micro LED chips. The production of the display screen is completed by cutting into individual devices, splitting and mixing light, and other steps. This packaging technology can perfectly inherit the "surface mount" process, and as the price of Mini/Micro LED chips decreases, it will effectively promote the iteration of the micro-pitch market to low-cost technology.
What deserves special attention is that COB, as the high-end direction of packaging technology, has gradually become an important product technology trend under the development of LED screen micro-pitch, and the camp and scale of related manufacturers are rapidly expanding.
It is reported that the COB technology route is to directly weld the optical chip (wafer) on the PCB board, then cover it as a whole to form a unit module, and finally splice it into a whole LED screen. Although the surface of the COB package is flat and the protection is better than the traditional SMD package, the GOB package adds a glue filling process on the surface of the screen, making the LED lamp beads more stable and greatly reducing the possibility of lamp failure. Stability Stronger.
Currently, COB technology is mainly used in fields such as indoor small-pitch micro-pitch, curved surfaces, special-shaped LEDs, and virtual pixels; while MIP is mainly used in fields such as quasi-Micro LED displays, DCI color gamut cinema screens, and XR virtual shooting.
With the development of Mini/Micro LED technology and the maturity of small-pitch products, the industrial agglomeration effect has become increasingly obvious. At the same time, cross-border companies have entered the industry one after another, and the future industrial structure may be reshaped.
