Micro light-emitting diodes

Micro light-emitting diodes (microLEDs) are an emerging directly emissive display technology. Compared with organic LED and liquid-crystal displays, microLED displays offer advantages in terms of brightness, colour, minimum pixel size and lifetime. Single-micrometre-emitter sizes and pixel pitches also mean that microLEDs can be used to create novel display applications such as near-to-eye technologies and pico-projectors. Here we review the development of microLEDs, highlighting key performance characteristics that suggest that microLEDs could be the next prominent display technology in consumer electronics. We examine the three leading microLED manufacturing approaches—monolithic integration, mass transfer and nanowire growth—and consider their most likely use cases. We also highlight current microLED system demonstrations and consider the potential future applications of microLED technologies.