MicroLED Has Potential to Become ‘Ultimate Display,’ Says Kopin CEO

Though microdisplay supplier Kopin landed its first microLED patents in the 1990s, it didn’t consider commercializing the technology until recently, founder-CEO John Fan told Insight Media President Chris Chinnock in a published Q&A Monday. “As laser printers became better and cheaper,” the LED printers of the 1990s “became obsolete,” said Fan. In the time when the first patents were granted, the technology for thin-film LEDs and bonding to silicon “was immature and possible applications for LED microdisplays were not clear,” he said. Kopin is investigating how microLED can “complement our display portfolio,” said Fan. “This would be a logical progression.” MicroLED’s biggest advantage is its potential for very high brightness, which would be “useful” for augmented-reality applications, but using the technology in microdisplays is “still in an early stage of development,” he said. Done successfully, it “could be the ultimate display,” he said.