THE FUTURE OF AUTOMOTIVE Micro-LED

Electronic enthusiast network report (Article/Zhou Kaiyang) As OLED panels begin to become popular in the consumer market, their high-quality display effect is gradually accepted by the public, but if we look at the automotive market, the penetration rate of OLED is not even one percent, and there are even fewer models in cars. But in recent years, we have found Micro-LED, which has not yet begun mass production, is valued by many manufacturers and expects it to develop in the automotive market. 

The Advantages of Micro-LED in the Vehicle

After two years of publicity, everyone knows the traditional advantages of Micro-LED, such as longer life, higher luminance, more power saving and so on. It is precisely for this reason that Micro-LED will become the next generation of mainstream display technology after solving problems such as mass production and cost. 

But these performance advantages are not enough for Micro-LED to dominate the automotive market, let alone allow panel manufacturers to spend a lot of effort to promote, so what are the "automotive advantages" of Micro-LED? At this year's International Mini/Micro LED Supply Chain Innovation and Development Summit, Wu Tianyi, chief expert from TIANMA, shared the real advantages of Micro-LED.

First of all, compared to the transparency of OLED displays, which are only 20 to 40 percent, Micro-LED displays can be even higher than 70%. This is ideal as a car window display. Even while riding in the car, you will not miss the information on the screen, and with the high brightness characteristics mentioned above, it solves the problem of readability in various external environments. 

Another major advantage of Micro-LED for automotive displays is splicability, that is, it has the ability to splice indefinitely. Because of this, this type of display panel can meet the requirements of different sizes, different shapes and bezel-less of vehicle displays while maintaining a high PPI. 

Moreover, it can be integrated. For the limited vehicle space, high integration can be said to be an inevitable trend. Like touch and biometrics are already familiar display integration solutions. According to TIANMA, Micro-LED can also integrate temperature, infrared sensing, 5G millimeter wave antennas and even LiFi, which is equivalent to pushing human-machine interaction to the next level. 

Wu also added that among the various backplane types of Micro-LEDs, LTPS Micro-LEDs for watches, mobile phones and notebooks are more suitable for in-vehicle displays because it strikes a balance between size and ppi. 

The Panel Manufacturer is in Action

Because of these advantages, many manufacturers have started their own Micro-LED to vehicle process. For example, AUO launched a 14.6-inch scrollable Micro-LED display this year, achieving 2K resolution, 202PPI and 40mm storage curvature radius. Also launched is a 17.3-inch transparent Micro-LED display module with a resolution of 1280x720, transparency of more than 60%, and a maximum luminance of 2000 nits. 

AUO’s future intelligent cockpit/AUO

TIANMA also launched its own high resolution AM Micro-LED automotive display module, an LTPS-powered 11.6-inch display that can achieve 228ppi, luminance of more than 600 nits and a color gamut greater than 116% NTSC. TIANMA has also connected more than 100 upstream and downstream manufacturers to establish the Micro-LED Alliance, uniting car manufacturers, core equipment manufacturers and industry organizations to accelerate the implementation of Micro-LED technology. 

In addition, although manufacturers like IVO chose to increase the production of vehicle Mini LED, but because of Mini LED is often regarded as the transition technology of Micro-LED, so it is likely to be directly replaced by Micro-LED in the future. This is also the reason why IVO has been studying the industrialization of Micro-LED related technologies. 

Summary

Although the vision of automotive Micro-LED is good, as TIANMA previously predicted, it still takes some time for Micro-LED to enter the automotive market due to limitations such as cost, huge transfer technology and high-temperature color bias. Therefore, unlike the mobile phone or notebook market that has been firmly occupied by OLED, the vehicle display may still be dominated by TFT-LCD in a short period of time. This also corresponds to Yole's prediction, the automotive industry is expected to start using Micro-LED after 2025, and from some samples that have been released, the early stage is still dominated by small-size displays. 

Source: 电子发烧友网 Official Accounts

RayClouds is a high-tech enterprise focusing on optical measurement. We took the market as the guide to launch INTELLIGENT COCKPIT OPTICAL MEASUREMENT SOLUTIONS, work with relevant manufacturers of automotive displays to optimize the display quality of products, and accelerate the industrialization process of automotive Micro-LED.