Significant Investment in ALD Technology for MicroLED & AR: Oxford Instruments' Pioneering Role

Oxford Instruments, a renowned name in the realm of technology, has recently made a significant contribution to the advancement of MicroLED and Augmented Reality (AR) devices. The company has supplied its state-of-the-art Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology to a leading UK manufacturer. This move is set to revolutionize the way we experience consumer-immersive reality products and display devices.

The Rise of MicroLED and AR

The demand for wearable devices with compact form factors and high-definition displays is skyrocketing. This trend is driving extensive research and development in the industry. MicroLEDs stand out in this arena for their ability to offer incredibly small die pitch sizes (less than 10 µm), enabling the miniaturization of wearable display devices without compromising image resolution. However, as pitch sizes shrink, the challenges in manufacturing increase, particularly regarding the damage caused during mesa formation and isolation steps. This damage can significantly impede device performance.

Oxford Instruments' Breakthrough with Plasma ALD

At the 2023 International Conference on Nitride Semiconductors (ICNS) in Fukuoka, Japan, the spotlight was on Plasma ALD technology, provided by Oxford Instruments. This technology has been hailed for its ability to mitigate damage and substantially boost external quantum efficiency – a critical measure of material performance. The Plasma ALD technology from Oxford Instruments, especially their high-K passivation solution, is optimized for smaller dies, enhancing performance in devices like head-mounted displays for virtual reality and smartwatches.

Oxford Instruments' ASP tool for PEALD offers precise, plasma-enhanced thin-film deposition, ideal for semiconductor, photonics, and microLED applications.

Klaas Wisniewski, Oxford Instruments' Strategic Business Development Director, expressed excitement about their Plasma ALD technology's growing market presence. "Our low-damage Plasma ALD technology, especially on our 200 mm capable platform, has been instrumental in doubling the external quantum efficiency for some of our customers at ICNS," said Wisniewski.

Looking Forward: Photonics West 2024

Oxford Instruments is not resting on its laurels. As a leader in compound semiconductor processing equipment, the company is set to participate in Photonics West 2024 in San Francisco. There, Oxford Instruments will showcase its latest optoelectronics processes for augmented, virtual, and mixed reality, as well as quantum and data transfer applications critical for AI and machine learning. This event will be an excellent opportunity for industry professionals to learn how Oxford Instruments' etch, deposition, and Ion Beam process solutions can enhance their projects, ensuring higher efficiency and lower costs.

In conclusion, Oxford Instruments' investment in ALD technology for MicroLED and AR is a game changer, marking a significant step forward in the evolution of consumer electronics and immersive reality experiences.

Rising Tide in AR/VR Market: New Era of Spatial Computing Begins Amidst Challenges

The augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) market is witnessing a resurgence of interest, particularly with the industry's pivot towards the metaverse. Key players like Meta and Apple are at the forefront, with Apple's launch of Vision Pro marking a new phase in spatial computing. This technology is widely viewed as the next evolutionary step in 3D digital interaction.

Source: DSCC

Despite the enthusiasm, the market reality has lagged behind expectations. According to a recent IDC report, global AR/VR headset shipments have seen a consistent decline, dropping 44.6% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2023. This trend highlights the challenges in boosting demand and adoption rates. A critical area for growth lies in innovative display technologies, crucial for developing AR/VR products.

The Quest 3's design is an evolution of that of the Quest 2, combined with elements of the Meta Quest Pro. It uses a pair of LCD displays with a per-eye resolution of 2064×2208 (an increase over the 1832×1920 resolution of the Quest 2), viewed through pancake lenses similar to the Quest Pro to enable a thinner enclosure. The face of the headset is adorned with three "pills" containing sensors and cameras; the two outer pills each contain a monochrome camera used for positional tracking, and a color camera used for mixed reality passthrough. The center pill contains a depth sensor, which is used in combination with other sensors to sense the user's surroundings for boundaries and mixed reality experiences. The Quest 3 uses the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, a system-on-chip manufactured by Qualcomm and based on their Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 flagship mobile phone SoC. which Meta has touted as having more than twice the raw graphics (GPU) performance of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 used by the Quest 2 and other similar standalone headsets

The future, however, looks promising. Guillaume Chansin of DSCC anticipates a significant uptick in the AR/VR headset market over the next five years, beginning in 2024. This optimism is fueled by expectations of advanced headsets powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, alongside new offerings from Meta, ByteDance, and Apple. Despite a steep price tag, Apple's Vision Pro, equipped with optical inserts from Zeiss, is expected to make a mark in the market.

Apple Vision Pro is an upcoming mixed-reality headset developed by Apple Inc. It was announced on June 5, 2023, at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, with availability scheduled for early 2024 in the United States and later that year internationally. It is Apple's first product in another major category since the Apple Watch in 2015

The shift towards multiple displays in AR/VR products is another notable trend, with most devices incorporating dual displays. DSCC projects a staggering increase in display shipments for AR/VR, reaching 124 million units by 2028. While VR is set to dominate consumer spaces, see-through AR will be more prevalent in professional settings.

The battle of display technologies is central to this evolution. While VR and pass-through AR mostly rely on TFT LCD and AMOLED, MicroOLED has started to make inroads. MicroOLED, particularly favored by Apple's Vision Pro, offers high resolution and luminance, crucial for an enhanced user experience. Additionally, the emerging MicroLED technology, known for its high brightness and reliability, is poised to revolutionize see-through AR displays.

Despite these advancements, the AR/VR market continues to grapple with challenges in display technology. Innovations in Micro OLED and MicroLED are essential to overcome these hurdles and drive market growth. As the industry continues to evolve, these technologies will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of spatial computing.

ALD offers significant advantages in Micro OLED and MicroLED display manufacturing. Its ability to deposit ultra-thin, uniform layers is crucial for layer uniformity and display quality. ALD is pivotal for creating barrier layers in Micro OLEDs, protecting them from environmental degradation, and for depositing dielectric layers in MicroLEDs, essential for improving efficiency and reducing pixel cross-talk. Additionally, ALD enhances light extraction, encapsulation, and interface engineering, crucial for flexible and transparent displays. While initially costly, ALD's scalability and material diversity make it a key technology for advancing Micro OLED and MicroLED displays, potentially reducing overall manufacturing costs and enhancing display longevity and performance.

Sources: 

MicroOLED and MicroLED: The Future of AR/VR Displays – Display Daily

Wikipedia

Picosun ALD and NYCU in Taiwan enhances micro-LED efficiency

ESPOO, Finland, 5th of April 2022 – Picosun Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) has played a vital role in enhancing electro-optical characteristics of micro-LEDs in research done by National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) in Taiwan.

The usage of dielectric films as a passivation material is a popular technique to suppress dangling bonds as well as to improve output power and external quantum efficiency in LEDs. The study conducted at NYCU compared III-Nitride micro-LEDs of different sizes with and without ALD Al2O3 passivation. The results showed external quantum efficiency enhancement of 70% for 5 µm × 5 µm micro-LEDs and 60% for 10 µm ×10 µm micro-LEDs when using ALD Al2O3 passivation.

In addition, to achieve full color display, an inkjet printing to pattern quantum dots automatically has been developed at NYCU. The solution can considerably improve the precision of color pixels and satisfy the high-resolution requirements. Picosun ALD passivation technology was successfully used for preventing the quantum dots from photo-oxidation and degradation. After a 500 hours environmental reliability test, the color gamut remained at excellent level.*

“Micro-LED technology has been the disruptive technology in the next generation displays, and more application areas are emerging its benefits being long lifetime, high power efficiency and high brightness. With quantum dot-based technology micro-LEDs can be used in applications such as virtual and mixed reality as they allow the use of single-color, blue, micro-LED chips resulting in lower manufacturing costs. Our study has proved that ALD passivation plays a key role in upcoming nanometer-scale devices”, says Hao-Chung Kuo, professor at NYCU.

“Picosun’s ALD technology has been production-proven at many prominent LED manufacturers. ALD films’ superior conformality and uniformity, and their ability to ensure reliable, pinhole-free encapsulation even at extremely low film thicknesses is a key benefit. Furthermore, the ALD process can be run at moderate temperatures”, explains Juhana Kostamo, VP, Industrial Business Area of Picosun Group.

Improving Curved uOLED encapsulation with ALD

[Beneq Blog] For the past decades, organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) have become of great interests for applications to micro-displays. Unfortunately, these systems are highly sensitive to moisture and oxygen ingress and require high barrier encapsulation. Additionally, a specific protection needs to be added to protect the device from mechanical failure. Depending on the application, various options from glass lids to flexible barriers have been developed. The former offers high mechanical protection but suffers from long implementation processes, while the later typically exhibit low hardness and poor wear resistance.

Pinhole free encapsulation via ALD deposited directly onto micro-OLEDs means simpler manufacturing and robust protection. The thinner ALD encasement enable substrate bending and open the possibility of more compact curved devices with less complex optical engines.

Continue reading at BENEQ: LINK

Veeco Introduces Suite of MOCVD Systems to Enable High Performance Photonics Devices

Plainview, N.Y. - Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO) introduced today the Lumina Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) platform, which incorporates the proprietary TurboDisc® reactor technology for outstanding film uniformity, yield and device performance for a variety of photonics applications. This new MOCVD platform, including the Lumina R480™ and Lumina R480S™ models, will accelerate the production of VCSEL, Edge-Emitting Laser (EEL) and Mini / Micro LED devices. 

 

(Image: Veeco)

In response to strong consumer demand for arsenic phosphide (As/P) MOCVD technology, the Lumina platform is advancing a new generation of high-efficiency photonics devices including VCSELs used in 3D sensing, autonomous driving and high-speed data communication. The Lumina platform is also designed for mini and micro LED production for advanced displays found in next-generation 4K and 8K televisions, smartphones and wearable devices, as well as EEL devices used for advanced optical communications and silicon photonics applications.

“Leading photonics manufacturers are currently seeing the benefits of our Lumina MOCVD system and are validating its impact in the manufacturing of high-volume photonics devices,” said Gerry Blumenstock, Senior Vice President, Product Line Management. “As the world’s leader in MOCVD equipment, the Lumina platform is the answer for the next generation VCSEL, EEL andmini / micro LED devices. With its proven design, technology and performance, Lumina provides exciting opportunities for the next generation of photonics devices.”

The Lumina R480 and R480S systems are based on Veeco’s industry leading MOCVD TurboDisc® technology which features excellent uniformity and low defectivity over long campaigns for exceptional yield and flexibility. In addition, Veeco’s proprietary technology drives uniform thermal control for excellent thickness and compositional uniformity. Providing a seamless wafer size transition, the system is capable of depositing high quality As/P epitaxial layers on wafers up to six inches in diameter. The R480 and R480S systems allow users to customize their systems for maximum value.

Veeco will be exhibiting at Photonics West in San Francisco, CA from Tuesday, February 4 to Thursday, February 6. Stop by booth number 1456 to learn more about Veeco’s MOCVD and ion beam sputtering solutions for photonics applications.

Improvement of the quantum efficiency of micro LED by ALD passivation

Micro LED has been interested in the next generation display and been actively developing at many electronics manufactures and institutes for applications of AR/VR, wearable device and extra-large display as a core factor of the forth industry. Also it is evaluated to have superior properties to LED as well as OLED with low power consumption, excellent brightness, greater contrast, flexibility and reliability.

Micro LED of less than 10 µm size is required for displays needed high pixel per inch (PPI) but the quantum efficiency drop would occur by sidewall effect in the manufacturing process. Looking at the reason in detail, micro LED chips require separation of them by dry etching process and the sidewall effect reducing external and internal quantum efficiency happens not to optimize extraction of light by chemical contaminations and structural damages during the etching process.

ALD passivation on the sidewall of Micro LED after dry etching process

The passivation of sidewall by atomic layer deposition recover and remove the plasma damage by dry etching so that the quantum efficiency could be increased and also the ratio of improvement could increase as small as the size of micro LED.

Specially, the interest of productive ALD equipment has been gradually increased because of the excellent dielectric passivation by ALD Al2O3 thin films expecting to improve quantum efficiency.

NCD has been developing wafer based high throughput batch ALD system continuously enable to form high quality oxide passivation to improve the quantum efficiency of micro LED. By introduction of the system in production of micro LED, it could be expected to guarantee the productivity, high quality and performance reliability of high resolution micro LEDs for applications of AR/VR, flexible and wearable devices and extra-large displays.  

NCD Si wafer based batch ALD cluster system

Source: http://www.ncdtech.co.kr/2018/bbs/board.php?bo_table=eng_board_05&wr_id=47