Macroblock

Micro-LED attracts much attention from various applications such as handheld devices, wearable devices, display devices, automotive lighting, Li-Fi and etc. for its miniature size, increased brightness and wide color range. Macroblock, as a leading LED driver IC company, is honored to be invited to LED Forum 2016 to share micro-LED opportunities and challenges ahead.

At the forum, Mr. Kerry Huang, Technical Marketing Manager of Macroblock, said “Micro-LED may be widely-adopted to many applications, but Macroblock predicted that the first battle of micro-LED would be on the fine pitch LED displays, and we may expect the first micro-LED display to be on the market in 2017.”Mr. Huang further explained some of the common issues on fine pitch LED displays including dim lines, color patches, color tint, and ghosting effects. Macroblock has launched a series of fine pitch LED display driver ICs to solve these issues.

The benefits of micro-LED applied to fine pitch LED displays are quite attractive: 1. No more constraint on the SMD LED package size. 2. A higher resolution for its smaller pixel pitch. 3. Reduced production cost (no need for bounding and lead frame cost). At the initial stage of micro-LED development, most driving solutions are extended from the existing fixed voltage OLED driving technology. However, due to the LED characteristics, LED current is easily shifted with LED wave length to influence the stability of micro-LED and image quality. Other challenges include the dead pixel issue and dot correction needs. To maximize micro-LED features, Macroblock proposes that constant current driver ICs with 16-bit grayscale and low operation-voltage are more feasible for micro-LED applications.

Macroblock has been dedicated to LED driving technology and LED display applications for years. Although there are barriers ahead before micro-LED commercialization, Macroblock is very optimistic about the potential of micro-LED and expect to be a leading company in this next-generation display market.