Hurrairah bin Sohail speaks with Norman Lao who details how Leyard is introducing Micro LEDs and the impact the technological breakthrough will have on the market.
Everyone should be well aware of the cut-throat nature of the LED market. Norman Lao, CEO of Leyard APAC, sheds light: “The state of the LED industry is such that if you are not doing something new you will be
left behind the competition. Micro LED is
an extremely important advancement and
a step forward in the development of LED
technology.”
The importance of Micro LEDs is explained
by Lao: “With SMD technology, we have
comfortably reached products with 0.6mm
pixel pitch. But if you want to produce
products that have finer pixel pitches, you
run into a lot of barriers that are inherent
to SMD technology. There are challenges
and limitations of heat dissipation, surface
preparation, production yields and more.
At the same time, the trend in the industry
is to go towards 8K resolution. If you have
space and want a very big wall, it is easy to
deliver 8K resolution. But if you want an
LED display with 8K resolution and with
a smaller footprint you need finer pixel
pitches. Mini LED is a potential solution but,
in our opinion, Micro LED is one step forward
from that. It is the perfect product to leverage
the trends of 8K resolution and 5G which will
provide a ready-made solution for higher
resolution displays.”
To stay ahead of the curve and to capitalise
on the trends Lao highlights, Leyard has
been working on developing Micro LEDs.
The manufacturer is now ready to reveal its
products to the market. Lao talks about the
journey: “Last December, we signed a joint
venture agreement with Epistar. Epistar is
an LED chip manufacturer and Leyard is a
manufacturer of LED displays. Together, our
expertise extends from the beginning of the
LED manufacturing process from the raw
material to the finished product. With our
end-to-end capabilities we can provide a
finished Micro LED product that is ready
for commercial use.”
Lao continues: “The fruits of the
agreement are ready to be seen. Our Micro
LED product is ready and we will be going to
mass production in Q4 of 2020. We launched
the TX series in July in Beijing, China. We’ve
gone to market with a 0.6mm pixel pitch
product that surpasses the capabilities of
other competing products and we will be
introducing 0.4mm Micro LED tiles in Q4.”
Leyard was active in the research and
development process and Lao believes this
puts the manufacturer in good stead. He
details: “We have developed our own
common cathode driver chipset to create
a vital component of our Micro LED TX
series. There is nothing on the market that
can compete with our chipset because
our driver chipset has been completely
developed and designed in-house. This driver
chipset is what enables us to deliver better
colour, HDR, higher contrast, better heat
dissipation and lower power consumption.”
Looking ahead, Lao predicts the TX series
will enable Leyard to expand and to grow.
He concludes: “Micro LEDs address a lot
of the challenges faced by current SMD
LED solutions and also greatly improve
the performance quality. Our TX series
not only comes with HDR and high frame
rates but also delivers high contrast made
possible by its finer pixel pitch. These
expanded capabilities will bring higher
performance in applications where LEDs
are already being used [such as corporate,
retail and other sectors] and also open up
completely new applications and usage
scenarios. The TX series is ready for DCI
and digital cinema requirements and there
is a huge impact high quality LED displays
can make with the advent of 8K resolution
and 5G."