Q-Pixel debuts highest res colour display
Q-Pixel Inc., a microLED display startup, has achieved what it believes is the highest resolution, active-matrix colour display in the world.
Q-Pixel’s breakthrough display boasts 6800 pixels per inch (PPI), far surpassing current state-of-the-art displays, such as the Apple Vision Pro (~3380 PPI). The display is made entirely using microLED pixels.
Unlike most advanced VR displays, which use micro-organic LEDs (micro-OLEDs), Q-Pixel’s displays consist entirely of III-V compound microLED pixels. Synthesised from inorganic materials, III-V microLEDs offer many advantages over OLEDs, including faster response time, higher brightness, longer lifetime, and superior energy efficiency. From a physics perspective, inorganic III-V microLEDs have long been considered the ideal display technology but have lacked a clear path to commercial viability.
The main challenges to commercializing microLED displays arise from the traditional approach of assembling full colour pixels using individual monochromatic red, green, and blue (RGB) LEDs. For high-resolution displays requiring small (< 50 um) pixels, the assembly, testing, and repair of millions of RGB microLED subpixels is a complicated, labour-intensive, and expensive process. Moreover, the physical space required for three RGB subpixels restricts the display’s pixel density, posing an obstacle to realizing high-resolution displays. Q-Pixel’s overcomes both hurdles by replacing three RGB subpixels with individual, fully colour-tunable pixels.
The enabling technology is based on a disruptive tunable polychromatic LED (TP-LED) pixel: a single pixel capable of emitting light across the full colour spectrum, without any use of subpixels, quantum dots, colour filters, polarizers, or mechanical stacking. In addition to possessing all the benefits inherent to III-V LED technology, Q-Pixel’s single TP-LED greatly simplifies display assembly, reduces manufacturing costs, and enables world-record pixel densities.
Previously in May 2023, Q-Pixel unveiled their world-record 5000 PPI full-colour microLED display, and in November 2023 surpassed their world record with the simultaneous announcement of a passive 10,000 PPI microLED display made from the world’s smallest full-colour pixels (1 micron diameter), all based on their TP-LED technology.
Now by delivering the world’s highest resolution (6800 PPI) active-matrix colour display, Q-Pixel has accomplished two major milestones. First, they have proved that it is possible to produce ultra high-resolution, active displays based on the microLED technology. Secondly, Q-Pixel has shown that their TP-LED pixel technology surpasses more mature display technologies such as OLEDs to attain world-record breaking pixel densities. With these latest achievements, Q-Pixel has established themself as a trailblazer in the microLED field and will embark on the commercialization of dazzling displays.
Q-Pixel’s technology and prototype will be published in the upcoming issue of Compound Semiconductor magazine and demonstrated at Society for Information Display's annual symposium and tradeshow, SID Display Week, on May 14-16, 2024.
