Mini-LED, Micro-LED Technologies Expand

by Vianie Li & Cecile de Veyra

LED chips are widely used in indoor and outdoor, automotive, grow and advertising lighting. In China, a major production base, manufacturers have entry-level, midrange and high-end SMD and COB options in small sizes with high luminous efficacy and a long operating life span, all marketed with emphasis on price-performance ratio.

To take advantage of the growing display market, Chinese LED chip manufacturers are directing their attention to mini-LEDs and, further into the future, micro-LEDs, eyeing the surge that industry experts predict is soon to come. Industry research and consulting firm GGII is projecting an 85 percent CAGR for the mini-LED category from 2020 to 2025, with a value of $5.3 billion at the end of the period. In China, this technology performed well with a 140 percent YoY increase, hitting $555 million in 2020 from $235 million, and will reach $5.88 billion in 2026.

Chinese upstream suppliers are still preparing to produce third-generation GaN and SiC semiconductor materials that can handle high frequencies and temperatures, aimed at application in mini-LEDs and micro-LEDs. San’an Optoelectronics, one of the key companies in China, has invested $2.35 billion in a 667,000sqm facility in Hunan province, which will realize an annual production value of $1.76 billion before end-2022. Others such as HC Semitek and Xiamen Changelight are pursuing similar projects.

In TVs & displays to come

An improvement on the LED backlighting currently in widespread use, mini-LEDs are smaller - 0.008in or 0.2032mm or 203.2µ across – and so can be clustered to produce more precise colors, deeper blacks and brighter whites.

TCL launched first mini-LED TV – its X10 – in 2019, using 25,000 mini-LEDs grouped into about 1,000 zones. Samsung and LG soon followed suit, and the technology rose to prominence over the following year.

Mini-LEDs were “one of the biggest advancements in TV design to come to the forefront during CES 2021,” according to Brian Westover of Tom’s Hardware. By CES 2022, they were the first choice for TV companies - “just about every TV maker will sell a mini-LED TV of some kind in 2022,” according to Geoffrey Morrison on CNET.

As for micro-LEDs, as yet they remain “a near-future tech that's reserved for huge screens and rich people today – like a 110in Samsung for the cool price of $156,000,” says Morrison. Samsung’s and LG’s displays based on this technology use LEDs in the millions, essentially one for each pixel.

LED’s steady rise

Globally, the LED industry will continue to grow in the coming years. Total production value is expected to reach $8.11 billion in 2022, posting 9.2 percent YoY increase, and will be in the scale of $11.1 billion in 2026 at 8.4 percent CAGR from 2021, according to TrendForce.

In China, the total for 2020 was $3.25 billion from $2.95 billion in 2019 based on available data from Qianzhan Research Institute. The upward trend continued in 2021 and remains on track this year.

Many suppliers in China have been boosting production in anticipation of more demand. Guangdong Xusheng Semiconductor Co. Ltd added 30 percent to its capacity in the past 12 months and will sustain this rate in 2023 and 2024, allocating $1.176 million for the latest SMT and aging equipment. HC Semitek, which manufactures LED epitaxial wafers and chips, invested $220 million in early 2022 in its mini-LED and micro-LED project in Jiangsu province’s Zhangjiagang Economic & Technology Zone.