MicroLED and HUD Feature Prominently at Vehicle Displays and Interfaces Conference

Display (SID) held their annual Vehicle Displays and Interfaces (VDI) symposium September 9-10 in Detroit.The conference joined technical and business professionals working in relevant automotive areas from academia to industry.This article includes some of the highlights. MicroLED Automotive SolutionsChina-based Hongshi Intelligence Technology is developing microLEDbased headlights and puddle lights to compete with digital light processing (DLP)-based and alternative LED-based solutions.In their presentation, the company described a three-panel X-cube full-color solution, a 0.61-inch green and white microLED, a 0.12-inch green microLED, along with a novel approach to a full-color monolithic microLED.The 0.61-inch device, which is targeted for adaptive dynamic beam (ADB) or smart headlight applications, can be operated in green-only or white modes.In his presentation, Yi Liu (vice president of New Business Development) noted that the engine can achieve 8 million nits in green.Their microLED ADB solution is 50 percent smaller and uses 80 percent less power than a DLP ADB product.Their three-panel color solution that uses 0.12-inch displays appears to be similar to the micro-projector offered by Jade Bird Display.The resolution is 640 480 with a 0.35 cc volume, 2.5 million nits of brightness, and a 30-degree field of view (FoV) (Fig. 1).They plan to shrink the discrete microLED chips in this product to 0.1-inch or 0.08-inch diagonal and increase the resolution to 800 600.Liu said that their red-only panel uses quantum-dot (QD) color conversion and has achieved a record output of 2 million nits for devices less than 4 microns, the same size as the native blue microLED.Placing QDs directly on the LED has remained a challenge because of the high flux loading, which can rapidly degrade the QDs.Pacific Light Technologies was developing this technology and was later acquired by ams Osram.But that operation has now been shut down.While 2 million nits is impressive, Liu did not specify the lifetime, so it may not be commercially viable yet.