Fluidic self-assembly for MicroLED displays by controlled viscosity

Daewon Lee, Seongkyu Cho, Cheolheon Park, Kyung Ryoul Park, Jongcheon Lee, Jaewook Nam, Kwangguk Ahn, Changseo Park, Kiseong Jeon, Hwankuk Yuh, Wonseok Choi, Chung Hyun Lim, Taein Kwon, Young Hwan Min, Minho Joo, Yoon-Ho Choi, Jeong Soo Lee, Changsoon Kim () and Sunghoon Kwon ()
Additional contact information
Daewon Lee: Myongji University
Seongkyu Cho: Seoul National University
Cheolheon Park: Seoul National University
Kyung Ryoul Park: Seoul National University
Jongcheon Lee: Seoul National University
Jaewook Nam: Seoul National University
Kwangguk Ahn: Seoul National University
Changseo Park: LG Electronics
Kiseong Jeon: LG Electronics
Hwankuk Yuh: LG Electronics
Wonseok Choi: LG Electronics
Chung Hyun Lim: LG Electronics
Taein Kwon: LG Electronics
Young Hwan Min: LG Electronics
Minho Joo: LG Electronics
Yoon-Ho Choi: LG Electronics
Jeong Soo Lee: LG Electronics
Changsoon Kim: Seoul National University
Sunghoon Kwon: Seoul National University

Nature, 2023, vol. 619, issue 7971, 755-760

Abstract: Abstract Displays in which arrays of microscopic ‘particles’, or chiplets, of inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) constitute the pixels, termed MicroLED displays, have received considerable attention1,2 because they can potentially outperform commercially available displays based on organic LEDs3,4 in terms of power consumption, colour saturation, brightness and stability and without image burn-in issues1,2,5–7. To manufacture these displays, LED chiplets must be epitaxially grown on separate wafers for maximum device performance and then transferred onto the display substrate. Given that the number of LEDs needed for transfer is tremendous—for example, more than 24 million chiplets smaller than 100 μm are required for a 50-inch, ultra-high-definition display—a technique capable of assembling tens of millions of individual LEDs at low cost and high throughput is needed to commercialize MicroLED displays. Here we demonstrate a MicroLED lighting panel consisting of more than 19,000 disk-shaped GaN chiplets, 45 μm in diameter and 5 μm in thickness, assembled in 60 s by a simple agitation-based, surface-tension-driven fluidic self-assembly (FSA) technique with a yield of 99.88%. The creation of this level of large-scale, high-yield FSA of sub-100-μm chiplets was considered a significant challenge because of the low inertia of the chiplets. Our key finding in overcoming this difficulty is that the addition of a small amount of poloxamer to the assembly solution increases its viscosity which, in turn, increases liquid-to-chiplet momentum transfer. Our results represent significant progress towards the ultimate goal of low-cost, high-throughput manufacture of full-colour MicroLED displays by FSA.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06167-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:619:y:2023:i:7971:d:10.1038_s41586-023-06167-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06167-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().