Technology developer VerLASE Technologies (Bridgewater, NJ), recognizing that 'mass production' challenges are the central issue standing in the way of enabling widespread adoption of microLED technology, has developed and patented technologies for massively parallel assembly of microLED dies or films. Many observers point to the inherent advantages of microLEDs such as brightness, efficiency, robustness, and a vision of modular panels that could be tiled into displays of any size. While a superior technology in theory which, for example, overcomes the many problems surrounding OLED displays, microLED displays have been bedeviled by practical manufacturing aspects. Among these, perfectly assembling the microLED subpixels, which can be as small as 10 microns or even smaller, in a commercially viable way on a switching backplane remains a huge, unsolved problem.
Several companies, including a few startups, have shown various approaches to solving this problem at trade shows and conferences; however, the proposed methods appear too slow to be cost effective and generally offer no apparent way of repair and replace, since displays must be perfect with no misplaced pixels. The microLED display prototypes shown to date also tend to have lower resolutions (PPI) than might be needed today, for example, for a typical smartphone display or 8K display.
VerLASE is focused on practical methods that use well-proven semiconductor and MEMs industry methods and existing tools in novel ways to enable deterministic, massively parallel transfers of microdie, yet with provisions that allow selective repair. The methods use well developed techniques used daily in Ink-Jet Printing but is not printing per se. Comprehensive patent filings cover multiple variations of the Company's proprietary core LAAP [trademark] process (Large Area Assembly Process). "In levering the Ink-Jet industry, our solution offers a quick path for MicroLEDs to disrupt the displays industry," said Ajay Jain, Company CTO and inventor of the technology.
The Company is working on demonstrating the base principles of its solution while in discussions with potential investors. VerLASE had previously been focused on color conversion technology for microLEDs and related applications, which remains a core capability but decided to broaden the horizon given its novel solution to the Mass-Transfer problem. It has 7 US Patents now issued covering various aspects in color conversion, including some in Japan, Korea, and China, with others pending. It has now also filed a suite of IP relating to its Mass-Transfer solution.
The patents that are issued encompass VerLASE's Chromover [trademark] branded color conversion technology, which can efficiently downconvert colors from inexpensive, widely available blue/violet light sources such as LEDs, microLEDs, or laser diodes to any color in the visible range for a wide variety of applications, to novel materials used both passively as phosphors, and actively as the electroluminescent layer in light engines of the near future.
The Company spun out of Versatilis LLC (http://www.versatls.com) in 2013 with an investment by Wakley Limited, a Hong Kong based private investment group, and operates with partners around the world. Founded by Versatilis' principals George Powch (CEO) and Ajay Jain (CTO), it focuses on technology development for large markets of the near future involving novel materials, structures, and processes.
SOURCE: VerLASE via PRWeb; https://www.prweb.com/releases/verlase_extends_growing_ip_base_to_mass_transfer_technology_for_microled_displays/prweb16250753.htm
