SBIR-STTR Award

Laser-Enabled Massively Parallel Die Transfer for microLED Displays
Award last edited on: 9/8/2023

Sponsored Program
SBIR
Awarding Agency
NSF
Total Award Amount
$974,365
Award Phase
2
Solicitation Topic Code
PH
Principal Investigator
Matthew Semler

Company Information

Uniqarta Inc

42 Trowbridge Street Unit 1
Cambridge, MA 02138
   (781) 863-0079
   N/A
   www.uniqarta.com
Location: Multiple
Congr. District: 05
County: Middlesex

Phase I

Contract Number: 1745903
Start Date: 1/1/2018    Completed: 12/31/2019
Phase I year
2018
Phase I Amount
$224,618
The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to reduce the power consumption of display and lighting products by 90%. It will do so by enabling the pervasive use of light emitting diodes (LEDs) in such products. LEDs consume substantially less power than other display/lighting technologies and also offer benefits such as superior picture or lighting quality and longer lifespan. The foremost barrier to the emergence of such products is the difficulty of economically placing large quantities of LEDs onto a product grid. For example, if current-day methods are used to create a full high definition display, its assembly would take about a month and drive its cost far beyond what the market could accept. This project's innovation addresses this problem with a laser-based, ultra-high speed LED placement solution. Beyond this immediate application, it will further the industry's technical capabilities relative to electronics component assembly in general. The commercial potential for chip-based LED display and lighting products is expected to reach about $10 billion within five years. The market for LED placement solutions in support of these products will be about $1 billion in this same time frame. The proposed project addresses the above problem by demonstrating an ultra-high speed LED placement method that can reduce the one month assembly time in the example above to just one minute. This solution, unlike others in development, increases the placement rate of LEDs by a factor of 10,000 and includes the ability to pre-screen and replace non-functional LEDs. This project will demonstrate the core aspect of this solution involving the placement of multiple, very small LEDs ("microLEDs") using a single laser pulse diffracted into multiple scanned beams. It will use this solution to demonstrate the extremely fast assembly of a quantum dot-based microLED display. The project will build upon a related, previously demonstrated capability applied to larger, silicon dies. Each aspect of the technology (wafer preparation, single laser beam placement, multi-beam placement) will be individually optimized for the new conditions imposed by the smaller sized, sapphire-based microLEDs. This new, LED-tailored capability will then be used to demonstrate the assembly of a four thousand pixel microLED display in under one second thereby achieving the project's goal of demonstrating a >50M units/hour LED placement rate.

Phase II

Contract Number: 1926881
Start Date: 10/1/2019    Completed: 9/30/2021
Phase II year
2019
(last award dollars: 2020)
Phase II Amount
$749,747

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to enable a new display technology that, among other benefits, reduces the power consumption associated with public displays, TVs, mobile devices, wearables. MicroLED display technology has the potential to reduce display power consumption by 90% relative to today's displays, representing a large opportunity to impact the world's power consumption profile. The proposed project will advance the Laser Enabled Advanced Placement (LEAP) technology to a level where microLED displays can be produced efficiently, reliably, and in volume. MicroLED displays are widely considered to be the next generation of display technology, but the lack of methods for placing the millions of required microLEDs per display is one of the major obstacles to their commercialization. LEAP solves this problem by rapidly scanning a laser beam diffracted into multiple beamlets across the source wafer to transfer microLED arrays in rapid succession, achieving placement rates orders of magnitude higher than current methods. The tasks in this project include the development and optimization of the entire LEAP process, including the development of critical-to-the-process materials, preparation of microLEDs for transfer, laser placement of microLEDs, and microLED interconnection on the device substrate. The goal is to demonstrate a placement rate in excess of 100 M units per hour with a placement precision of <10 microns (3-sigma) and a yield of >99.5%. The project will conclude with a demonstration of a microLED display assembled with the newly developed processes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.