MicroLED, also known as micro-LED, mLED or μLED is an emerging flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Inorganic semiconductor microLED (μLED) technology was first invented in 2000 by the research group of Hongxing Jiang and Jingyu Lin of Texas Tech University (TTU) while they were at Kansas State University (KSU). The first high-resolution and video-capable InGaN microLED microdisplay in VGA format was realized in 2009 by Jiang, Lin and their colleagues at Texas Tech University and III-N Technology, Inc. via active driving of a microLED array by a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) IC.
Compared to conventional LCD displays, microLED displays offer greatly reduced energy requirements while also offering pixel-level light control and a high contrast ratio. Compared to OLEDs, the inorganic nature of microLEDs gives them a longer lifetime and allows them to display brighter images with minimal risk of screen burn-in. Compared to other display technologies used for 3D/AR/VR, the sub-nanosecond response time of μLED has a huge advantage since 3D/AR/VR displays need high frames per second and fast response times to minimise ghosting. MicroLEDs are capable of high speed modulation, and have been proposed for chip-to-chip interconnect applications.
