The development history of LED display

The full English name of LED is Light Emitting Diode, and the Chinese name is Light Emitting Diode. The LED display screen is a display screen composed of dot matrix modules or pixel units composed of light-emitting diodes.

The era of two-color LED display and the birth of blue light Before 1993, LED products were mainly red and green, mainly used as indicator lights. At this time, due to the limitations of materials and devices, blue LEDs have not been developed, and LED displays have not been widely used.

In 1993, Shuji Nakamura successfully developed a high-brightness blue LED. At this point, the development of LED is really on the right track. Blue LED not only solves the problem of white light illumination of LED, but also symbolizes a historic breakthrough – the collection of RGB three primary colors has officially entered the full-color era of LED display.

With the improvement of the dynamic display effect of the LED display, its application fields have gradually expanded to the fields of airports, financial securities, and commercial advertisements.

Early LED displays used DIP technology (dual in-line package), which required pins to be inserted into chip sockets with a DIP structure. This packaging technology has problems such as the inability to reduce the volume of the LED lamp bead and the inability to reduce the weight of the LED display.
In 2001, the epoch-making SMD was launched, which greatly changed the development trajectory of LED display.

SMD is the abbreviation of Surface Mounted Devices, and the full name in Chinese is Surface Mounted Devices. Thanks to the miniaturization of LED light-emitting chips, SMD can first package the chips into lamp cups to make independent devices, and then mount them on the carrier board. As one of SMT (Surface Mounted Technology) components, SMD has greatly reduced the volume and weight. At the same time, SMT technology replaces most of the manual plug-in operations, which not only improves production efficiency, but also reduces production costs.

The image output of the SMD display is more vivid and sharp, the viewing angle is wider, the flatness is higher, the visibility under strong light is enhanced, and the service life is also extended. Thanks to this, the application field of LED display has been greatly expanded, and it has begun to be widely used in various indoor and outdoor scenarios.

Small Pitch LED & Mini LED

With the development of science and technology and the maturity of technology, people’s demand for ultra-high-definition display is increasing. Smaller pitch and smaller chips have become the direction that LED display technology is constantly pursuing.

The concept of Micro LED was proposed as early as 2000, but due to immature technology, it stayed in the concept or laboratory stage for a long time.

On the other hand, the concepts of small-pitch LED and Mini LED came into being in 2010 and 2016, respectively. Small-pitch LED display refers to the LED display with the LED point spacing of 2.5mm or less. The main advantages are high density, no joints, and natural and true display colors. It is mainly used in large-scale scenes such as commercial display. Mini LED refers to LED devices with a chip size between 50-200μm. There are currently two ways of direct display and backlight on the application side. It is mainly positioned in the high-end display market, and its application range extends from commercial to consumer electronic products, such as TVs. , mobile phones, tablets, etc.

Since 2021, Mini LED has appeared in the high-end products of manufacturers such as Apple, Huawei and Samsung, and the application field of Mini LED has become a high-profile emerging market.

Mini & Micro LED
Micro LED is regarded as a new generation of display panel technology after LCD and OLED, and has become the pursuit goal of various manufacturers. Micro LED is a micro light-emitting diode. Its chip size is less than 50μm, the pixel pitch is less than 0.1mm, and each pixel can emit light independently. As a new generation of display technology, Micro LED has the characteristics of high brightness, good luminous efficiency, low power consumption, long life and so on.

In 2012, Sony launched the first 55-inch display “Crystal LED Display” using Micro-level chips, creating a precedent for the commercialization of Micro LED. Although Samsung and other major manufacturers have since launched their own Micro LED products, due to chip transfer technology and cost, Micro LED has not actually been mass-produced, and its cost is still extremely high, and the price is more difficult to achieve. The “Castle in the Sky” that can be reached. At present, domestic and foreign manufacturers are still making unremitting efforts to truly enter the Micro LED field.

future outlook
From Henry Joseph Round’s discovery of luminescence in silicon carbide crystals in 1907, to the first red light-emitting diode made in 1962, the time span has been as long as 60 years. In just over 20 years since the invention of blue-light LEDs, LEDs have developed from the initial monochromatic light-emitting body to an LED display screen that integrates many advantages. It is not difficult to see that LEDs continue to accelerate and expand in both technological development and application fields. It is believed that under such a development trend, the display era of Micro LED is close at hand.