Mini{{0}}LED, also known as "sub-millimeter light-emitting diode", refers to a display unit with a chip size of 50-200μm and a pixel center pitch of 0.3-1.5mm. It is a brand-new technical definition that is accompanied by the market's ever-decreasing requirements for display pixel pitch and a breakthrough in the technology of small-pitch LEDs.
Mini-LED display
Mini-LED has two application paths, one is backlight and the other is direct display.
Mini-LED backlight adopts direct type backlight, which requires more dense LED chip distribution. The advantage is regional dimming, which greatly improves the contrast and color saturation of LCD flat panel displays, making LCD again occupy the mainstream position of high-end flat panel displays.
The RGB LED lamp bead in Mini-LED direct display is a pixel of the LED display. The advantages are self-luminous, thinner, wider color gamut, long life, and higher reliability, bringing the popularity of 2K, 4K, and 8K indoor displays.
Although Mini-LED is not as innovative and disruptive as Micro-LED, it can be widely used in special displays, commercial displays, and private displays.
The development of Mini-LED display technology has great benefits for every link in the industry chain, including chip factories, packaging factories, panel factories, and brand owners will all benefit from it.
On the application side, Mini{{0}}LED display backlight products are rapidly penetrating in small and medium-sized applications, and Mini-LED direct display products with P0.8-P1.5 high-definition close-up viewing will gradually penetrate.
Mini-LED display screens have been widely accepted in the market; the development of Micro-LED also needs to overcome technical barriers to mass production such as massive transfers. It is expected that it will be first applied to small-sized devices such as mobile phones within 4-6 years.
As a relatively mature transition technology, Mini-LED display still needs to deal with chip size reduction, red light flip chip, die bonding efficiency and yield, thin packaging, defective product detection, drive control and heat dissipation, and regional adjustment. Key technologies such as light.
In the development wave of Mini-LED display, whoever has mastered the core technology, who can provide a complete solution, who has the most advanced manufacturing platform, will become a rookie in the industry.
But any product will always have opposites. If Mini-LED displays are to be put into mass production, a lot of effort is needed.
Mini-LED display
The first is the upstream chip side. The technical difficulty is the chip size reduction and red light flip chip.
The second is the package end of the midstream. The difficulty is how to improve the efficiency and yield of die bonding under the premise of low cost, the thin packaging of direct display and backlight, and the detection and repair of defective products.
The third is the driver IC. Drive control and heat dissipation and area dimming are difficult points.
These difficulties are due to the smaller chip size and the corresponding increase in the number of chips; the huge transfer, current control, and detection difficulties brought about by the increase. Existing equipment and backlight materials cannot meet product requirements well.
For brand owners, new technologies mean new selling points. An excellent user experience combined with the brand's marketing strategy can enhance brand awareness and sense of technology.
For panel manufacturers, the emergence of new Mini-LED technology has solved the pain points of traditional LCD screens to a great extent. Through Mini-LED area backlighting, HDR, quantum dots and other technologies, Mini-LED plus LCD technology has a display effect It can perform positive PK with the OLED display effect, and at the same time solve the shortcomings of OLED service life and burn-in. What's more noteworthy is that the cost of Mini-LED plus LCD will be lower than the cost of OLED has become a common perception in the industry, which means that with the blessing of Mini-LED technology, the life cycle of LCD technology will extend for a long time. This is also what panel manufacturers who have invested heavily in LCD-related equipment in the early stage expect to see.
For upstream chip makers, with the continuous release of equipment capacity in the early stage, the entire upstream chip market will gradually experience serious overcapacity. Compared with traditional LED products, Mini-LED products demand LED chips. An increase of 2-3 orders of magnitude, which can greatly boost the digestion of upstream chip production capacity!
In particular, the packaging plant has played a very important role in the breakthrough of important technologies related to Mini-LED. Substrate technology, mass transfer technology, and inspection and repair technology are considered to be several key technologies for Mini-LED mass production. These technologies are also the housekeeping skills of packaging plants. In addition, because the magnitude of chip packaging has increased by 2-3 orders of magnitude, the huge increase in the magnitude of packaging has brought about an increase in the value of packaging factory revenue in the entire industry chain. The mastery of core technology and the increase in the value of the industry chain will undoubtedly increase the voice of packaging plants in the entire industry chain. This is definitely a major temptation for packaging plants that want to get rid of homogeneous competition.
