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by jessriedel 700 days ago
Ha, yea, in particular these monochromatic pixels can't simply be white. Notably ctrl-f'ing for "white" gives zero results on this page.

Relatedly, the page talks a lot about pixel density, but this confused me: if you swap each R, G, or B LED with an adjustable LED, you naively get a one-time 3x boost in pixel area density, which is a one-time sqrt(3)=1.73x boost in linear resolution. So I think density is really a red herring.

But they also mention mass transfer ("positioning of the red, green and blue chips to form a full-colour pixel") which plausibly is a much bigger effect: If you replace a process that needs to delicately interweave 3 distinct parts with one that lays down a grid of identical (but individually controllable) parts, you potentially get a much bigger manufacturing efficiency improvement that could go way beyond 3x. I think that's probably the better sales pitch.

4 comments

It would be interesting to plot all of the achievable colors of this LED on the chromaticity diagram. Presumably it'd be some sort of circle/ellipse around white but might have some dropouts in certain parts of the spectrum?
Pure wavelengths are on the horseshoe-shaped outline of the CIE 1931 space. The straight line connecting the ends of the horseshoe is the line of purples, which also isn't monochromatic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromaticity#/media/File:Planc...

Presumably they wouldn't need to do a pixel-to-pixel mapping, but could account for the wavelengths of neighbouring pixels to produce a more faithful colour reproduction at an effectively lower resolution.
It's going to be the spectral locus.
The key to this is using the same process to get all the colors. For separate R,G,B pixels you need 3 different processes and can't build them on the same chip, you need to assemble them - that's what allows the vast improvement in pixel density.
Don't forget about bond wires that need to be run to each die and/or connected to a backplane.
Doesn't the fact they have successfully demonstrated displays at 2000, 5000 and 10000 DPI alleviate those concerns a little bit?
It's not really meant as a concern, more a supporting argument: If every subpixel is identical, you can use simpler wiring patterns.
The subpixels don't need bonding wires, they have dedicated connections just like any transistor on a regular IC.
Would one not just use a few pixels to create white?

That does mean a variable resolution scenario.