Design and Characterization of Micro-LED Matrix Display With Heterogeneous Integration of GaN and BCD Technologies

Micro-light-emitting diodes (μLEDs) are semiconductor devices that have been shown to have higher luminous efficacy, higher contrast ratio, and higher energy efficiency than existing mainstream technologies based on liquid crystals or organic LEDs (OLEDs). Portable display applications such as wearable devices and head-up display are some of the interesting applications of μLED displays. However, this technology has not yet been mass-produced for commercial devices due to process yields, costs, and manufacturability issues. This article presents a novel technology for the heterogeneous integration of a μLED matrix display with bipolar complementary metal-oxide- semiconductor (CMOS) DMOS (BCD) circuits that could improve manufacturability by eliminating the need for a dedicated bond stack in the bump-bonding process. To validate the concept, custom high-performance, 2-D arrays of parallel-addressed GaN blue μLEDs matrices were fabricated. The individual μLED pixel diameters are 20 and 50 μm, respectively, and the overall dimension of the array is 650 μm2. In addition, a μLED display driver-integrated circuit (IC) with a compact size of 3×4.4 mm ² has been designed, implemented, and verified experimentally for the μLED matrices. Measured output optical power-forward bias current-forward bias voltage (P-I-V) curves of the individual μLED pixel are shown. The 4 × 4 μLED matrix has also been successfully driven using active-matrix driving and display pictures to demonstrate the function of active-matrix driving are presented.