China-based Jade Bird Display (JBD) has quickly progressed its development of microLED technology and has completed two rounds of strategic funding, with investments from BYD, Geely, and Alibaba, according to industry sources.
JBD's A3+ round was jointly led by BYD and the intellectual property fund under the Shanghai Science and Technology Venture Captial Group. The A4 round was led by Alibaba Cloud, Geely Holding Group, and V Star Capital.
Injections from the investments will allow JBD to expand the application of microLED in vehicle displays and near-eye displays, as well as accelerate the development of full-color microLED augmented reality (AR) applications.
Sources noted that the core of JBD's team comes from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's laboratory. Despite only being established in 2015, the pace of its technology development has been rapid and it was among the first batch of companies to actively invest in microLED microdisplay technology. JBD previously focused its R&D on monochrome microLED but has since invested in full-color to follow the trend.
Although Samsung Electronics has been promoting the use of microLED in large-size displays for years, industry sources believe that the application of microLED in microdisplays has yet to enter the mass commercialization stage by mainstream brand manufacturers.
At present, JBD has announced the mass production of its 0.13-inch, 0.22-inch, and 0.31-inch microLED microdisplays.
JBD's Hefei plant in China currently has an annual capacity of 120 million displays. The company has also completed its dedicated microLED driver IC, which is being produced by Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC). Sources noted that JBD's green light brightness ranks first in the industry.
At the recent Society for Information Display's (SID) annual tradeshow, JBD unveiled its polychrome microLED "Hummingbird" product, called one of the world's smallest, lightest light engines. It features a volume of only 0.4 cubic centimeters and a weight of just 1.0 grams, paired with a 0.13-inch microdisplay capable of VGA resolution and can achieve ultra-high brightness levels of 750,000 nits for red light, 5 million nits for green, and 1 million nits for blue.
Taiwan-based PlayNitride, which has also been focusing on R&D of microdisplays in recent years and uses quantum dots (QD) for color conversion, displayed a 0.49-inch microLED microdisplay module at the SID show that can reach up to 4,536 ppi full HD and brightness of more than 100,000 nits. PlayNitride has reportedly been approached by major international brands for cooperation. Internal estimates expect to enter commercialization in the next two years.
Industry players expect microLED microdisplays will be introduced into in-vehicle projectors or other in-vehicle applications in the near future.
Article translated by Eifeh Strom
