A Texas A&M University chemical engineering professor is helping chart the path for micro light-emitting diode displays — known as micro-LEDs — that could transform how future electronic devices are experienced.
Most screens today use organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Micro-LEDs, by contrast, build each pixel from microscopic inorganic LEDs. That key difference matters: unlike OLEDs, micro-LEDs use inorganic materials, which makes them more robust and longer lasting.
Dr. Jiho Shin and international collaborators published a comprehensive review in Light: Science & Applications that evaluates micro-LEDs' potential and pinpoints the manufacturing hurdles that still stand in the way of broad adoption.
The review highlights emerging applications, from virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets that need clear, bright images in compact glasses to transparent, flexible and stretchable displays for future devices like smartphones. Shin said exploring different ways to manufacture micro-LED displays will be essential to making these concepts practical at scale.
The size of the micro-LEDs, while being stronger, comes with challenges.
"When you make the tiny lights smaller, they don't shine as brightly as you'd expect. It's like a flashlight getting dimmer the smaller you make it," said Shin, an assistant professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. "This is a special problem for the red lights, which are the most important for making a full-color screen."
The researchers are working to resolve these challenges by testing different material types to make the micro-LEDs shine brighter, even at their small size.
"Some of these techniques use lasers to 'fire' the micro-LEDs into place, while others use a special liquid to guide them into the right spots," Shin said. "Once these problems are solved, we'll see micro-LEDs in some amazing new places."
Another potential solution is to develop microscopic assembly lines that can place and connect the micro-LEDs faster and more accurately.
"It's something that's sort of evolving, and it offers a lot of advantages over other methods of manufacturing micro-LED displays currently," Shin said. "Because displays are something that we are using every day, including smartphones, computers, laptops and even the most basic electronic devices: I think it gives an idea for the public of where things are going and it's valuable knowledge and understanding of where technology is moving us."
Collaborators on this work include Dr. Jung-El Ryu and Jeehwan Kim from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Drs. Joonghoon Choi, Young Joon Hong and Dong-Hwan Kim from Sungkyunkwan University.
By Raven Wuebker, Texas A&M University College of Engineering
