The micro LED field has seen frequent developments recently, with JBD, Novis Technology, Nanjing University, and other companies and institutions reporting the latest progress in their Micro LED businesses and technologies.
JBD has undergone a business registration change or completed its latest financing.
On December 2, according to Tianyancha's official website, JBD, a domestic Micro LED manufacturer, underwent an industrial and commercial registration change. The company's registered capital changed from RMB 55,841,713 million to RMB 56,614,906 million, and new shareholders Shanghai Chaos Investment (Group) Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Center No. 2 Private Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) were added.
This business registration change may indicate that JBD has completed another round of financing. It is understood that JBD has completed seven rounds of financing from 2021 to June of this year. In June of this year, JBD announced the official completion of its Pre-B round of financing, raising hundreds of millions of RMB. The Pre-B round was led by Ant Group, with Geely Capital participating, and existing shareholder GF Securities increasing its support. The funds raised will be used to increase JBD's R&D investment in core Micro LED microdisplay technologies, product mass production, the recruitment of high-end talent, and global market expansion.
Currently, JBD has become a mainstream technology manufacturer in the Micro LED microdisplay field, possessing a mature product line of monochrome and color Micro LED light engines. According to incomplete statistics, JBD has provided Micro LED microdisplay solutions for over 30 AR glasses products, including the newly released GO 2 from Shadowmoon Technology, Meta Orion, Rokid Glasses, StarV Air2 from Meizu, and G1 from Ewen Technology.
To achieve a smaller size and higher image quality for Micro LED microdisplays, JBD also launched the Hummingbird I color optical module with an eye brightness of 6000 nits this year; the Hummingbird Mini II, the industry's smallest AR light engine with a volume of 0.15cc and a luminous flux of 8lm; and the AR waveguide image quality correction device - ARTCS.
Norvision Technology and Weikesele jointly develop ultra-high brightness Micro LED microdisplay chips
On November 29, according to the official WeChat account of Lead Technology Group, Weikesele and Novis Technology have recently jointly developed an ultra-high brightness Micro LED microdisplay chip.
Image source: Lead Technology Group
According to reports, this technology not only solves a series of challenges currently facing Micro LED, but also opens up new possibilities for the development of future smart devices.
It is understood that Lead Technology Group entered the rare and dispersed metals industry in 1995 and has been focusing on the research, development, production, sales and recycling services of rare and dispersed metals and their high-end materials, devices, modules and systems. It has now become a leading global enterprise in the entire rare and dispersed metals industry chain, with business spanning many parts of the world and its products widely used in display, photovoltaic, semiconductor and other fields.
Founded in 2018, Weike Saile is a joint venture between Guangdong Pioneer Group and Chongqing Wanlin Investment Co., Ltd. The company is dedicated to the design, research and development, and manufacturing of semiconductor materials, wafers, and laser chips, with an annual production capacity of 100,000 gallium arsenide and indium phosphide epitaxial wafers and 2 billion high-end laser chips.
In 2024, Weco Solar achieved several technological breakthroughs, including launching a new 8-inch product for Micro LED, achieving mass delivery of large-size MPD chips, and obtaining AEC-Q102 automotive-grade certification for its LiDAR chips.
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Suzhou, with a registered capital of 2.7778 million yuan, Norview Technology is a Micro LED chip and device design and development company. It is mainly engaged in the design, research and development, manufacturing and sales of Micro LED chips and devices. Its products are widely used in display, micro-projection, HUD, AR/VR and optical communication fields.
This year, Novolight Technology has been very active in the Micro LED microdisplay field. In terms of product technology, Novolight Technology successfully lit up the world's first XGA vertically stacked full-color Micro LED microdisplay chip in April. In August, Novolight Technology launched a mass-produced single-chip full-color XGA Micro LED microdisplay chip with a peak brightness exceeding 500,000 nits.
In addition, Norvision Technology has also achieved the latest results in Micro LED micro-display technology in collaboration with research teams from Hunan University, Jingneng Optoelectronics and other industry-university-research institutions. They have successively prepared a 0.39-inch Micro LED full-color micro-display chip with an ultra-high brightness of 400,000 nits and an ultra-high resolution of 3,300 PPI, as well as a green Micro LED micro-display module with the highest publicly reported brightness of 10 million nits.
In terms of financing, in March of this year, Norview Technology completed a Pre-A2 round of financing worth 100 million yuan, which will be used for the construction of a mass production line for Micro LED microdisplay chips, as well as for further research and development of Micro LED chips based on VSP (Vertically Stacked Pixels) technology.
Nanjing University, in collaboration with Xiamen University, Hefei University of Technology, Xiamen Future Display Research Institute, and Tianma Microelectronics, has successfully developed the world's first RGB full-gallium nitride (GaN) based TFT-based Micro LED full-color display screen. This achievement marks the first successful verification of the new full-color technology solution. The results were officially announced at the 10th International Third Generation Semiconductor Forum (IFWS 2024) held in Suzhou from November 19-21.
It is understood that due to the bottleneck in high-quality red InGaN quantum well epitaxial growth technology, the efficiency of gallium nitride-based red Micro-LED chips has been difficult to improve.
The team from Nanjing University and Hefei University of Technology has been dedicated to the epitaxial growth of high-In-content red LEDs. By optimizing growth conditions and designing various stress-controlled structures, they have significantly improved the quality of high-In-content InGaN quantum well materials. They have successfully fabricated tunnel junction red Micro-LED devices with an electrical injection efficiency of over 90% using molecular beam epitaxy and have further elucidated the phenomenon of performance degradation of the device under high-temperature conditions and the underlying physical mechanism.
The research findings, titled “High-Temperature Performance of InGaN-Based Amber MicroLEDs Using Epitaxial Tunnel Junction Contacts,” were published in Applied Physics Letters 124, 14203 (2024) (https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0190000) and were selected as an Editor's Pick by the editor-in-chief of APL.
Figure 1: (a) Transmission electron microscope image of tunnel junction in red light Micro-LED; (b) EDS images of In and (c) Al elements in hybrid quantum well; (d-e) Full-color display of all nitrides.
The technical teams from Nanjing University and Xiamen University further collaborated with Tianma Microelectronics to propose new methods and technologies to improve the efficiency and yield of laser mass transfer. They jointly developed the world's first RGB all-nitride chip TFT-based super retina display Micro-LED full-color screen with a pixel density of up to 403 PPI. This work has confirmed the feasibility of all-nitride display technology and provided a new full-color technical solution for the development of future new display technologies.
