Image Credit: Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

Over the history of digital display, significant strides have been made to improve the technology. From the nascent beginnings of LCD to the transparent displays recently showcased at CES 2024, digital display has made purposeful progress. OLED has held a firm spot as the most popular digital display type for a variety of applications, but the promising capability of MicroLED has put it in the spotlight, and with good reason.

MicroLEDs are a relatively new innovation in display technology. Digital displays are generally categorized into two categories: Backlit, and self-luminous, with MicroLEDs falling into the latter category. Like OLED displays, MicroLEDs operate by running an electrical current directly through the electroluminescent (EL) layer to generate the picture. This reduces the complexity of the display in contrast to backlit LED displays, which require additional parts to produce a picture with similar results.

LG's 272" MicroLED 8K display, debuted at ISE 2023

How MicroLEDs set themselves apart from OLEDs is a relatively subtle, but key difference: The EL layer is made up of inorganic materials. While OLED EL layers have the advantage of being much more flexible and efficient than backlit displays, they’re also much more susceptible to degradation over time due to the use of organic materials. Inorganic materials greatly enhance the service life of a MicroLED display, as well as providing even better color ranges and power efficiency.

The biggest hindrance to the adoption of MicroLED lies in an all-too-familiar cause: Price. The process to develop and create MicroLEDs is relatively new, and the material costs associated with manufacturing the displays are equally prohibitive. Before these costs can come down, manufacturers have to establish and implement processes that allow for affordable, large-scale production.

Despite these initially high barriers, the technology is promising enough for major manufacturers to currently sell a limited range of MicroLED displays. As time progresses, the manufacturing processes are expected to improve in efficiency, making MicroLEDs more widely available for a variety of products.