While Sony and Samsung have already unveiled their display modules equivalent to Micro LED technology, the prices at which they have been made available are almost irreverent, given that they cost more than $ 50,000 per square meter of screen, far exceeding the ratio of $ 500 per square meter of current 4K LCD panels, and even $ 3,000 per meter of OLED displays.
A new manufacturing process will make Micro LED technology cheaper
Fortunately, they have now discovered a new manufacturing method for Micro LED panels, consisting of integrating CMOS circuits into the Micro LED chips themselves. This, as they have been able to prove already, greatly increases the rate of return of manufacturing plants and greatly reduces their cost. In addition, this process reduces the complexity of bringing micro LED chips to wafer manufacturing molds, so that increase production speed.
In addition, the rear panels used by this technology do not necessarily have to be TFT-LCD glass, but other materials such as glass, metals or even flexible materials can be used, giving these panels greater versatility and possible points of additional cost savings.
Since the size of the glass substrates are limited for production lines, it is difficult to manufacture LCD panels or even OLEDs of more than 120 inches. In comparison, the micro LED modules can be tiled creating screens of 110, 220, 440 … or basically of the inches needed (Imagine, for example, movie screens made with this technology, as this is something viable in the future). For this reason, the development of this technology is very interesting for the industry and it is several companies, in addition to Sony and Samsung, who are investing because they are interested in it.
When will we see it on gaming monitors for the consumer?
Industry analysts are quite optimistic. Although they have not given concrete figures of what savings this new manufacturing method entails, they have already said that they anticipate that its use is massified around 2024, and if today the LED panels are the standard, by then they will be the Micro LED. This means that there is not much time left for us to begin to see gaming monitors They use this panel technology, although it is true that at the moment its price is still terribly high and not suitable for ordinary users.
The fact is that, it seems, the industry now tends towards this technology and they intend that we see it standardized in less than four years. We will have to see how manufacturing prices evolve to know at what prices the first products for the consumer will arrive, of course.
