The world's first lossless Micro-LED chip,

"Qiushui Semiconductor" was established in November 2022. It is a semiconductor company focusing on Micro-LED display technology. The company's main products are Micro-LED microdisplay chips and modules, covering application areas including digital car lights, micro-projection and AR displays.

In order to better understand the so-called Micro-LED microdisplay chip, we first need to understand the pain points of common LEDs. The traditional LED display screen is a display screen that displays large-screen images due to its large pixel spacing, limited resolution, and certain limitations in brightness and energy consumption.

And Micro-LED micro-display technology has broadened the application space of projection active display due to its unique advantages. Micro-LED microdisplay chips can achieve higher resolution and better color saturation due to their smaller pixels and smaller chip size. They are also optimized in terms of brightness and energy consumption, so they can be used as a more refined and energy-saving display technology to supplement existing LED technology.

Micro-LED micro-display technology has a wide range of application scenarios, including digital car lights, augmented reality (AR) devices, wearable devices, and vehicle-mounted displays. In the field of digital headlights, it enhances driving safety by providing finer beam control and higher brightness. In the field of AR/XR, Micro-LED improves the visual experience with its high brightness and low energy consumption. For wearable devices such as smart watches, Micro-LED technology can provide high-resolution displays while maintaining a small size while reducing energy consumption. In the vehicle display market, it improves the display quality of vehicle information systems.

According to a report by Grand View Research, the global Micro-LED market size is estimated to be 623.6 million US dollars in 2023, and is expected to grow from 2024 to 2030 at 7With a compound annual growth rate of 7.4%, the market size will reach US$25.65 billion by 2030.

The establishment of "Qiushui Semiconductor" originated from the research of the founder Dr. Jiang Zhenyu during his doctoral studies at Pennsylvania State University. When Google launched the first generation of Google Glass in 2013, Jiang Zhenyu believed that Micro-LED display technology was the next generation of revolutionary display technology and would open up new application areas.

At that time, Micro-LED technology still had problems such as material damage and low optical efficiency. These problems severely limited the development and application of Micro-LED technology. Therefore, according to 36Kr, as the first inventor of the patent, Dr. Jiang Zhenyu pioneered Gap-free Microdisplay technology, which was the first in the world to use ion bombardment instead of etching to improve material damage.

Jiang Zhenyu told 36Kr that the team further invented a new technical route-lossless (Damage-free) Micro-LED chip technology. This technology uses electrical insulation structures to replace physical insulation methods, withoutThe electrical isolation of pixels is achieved in the case of material damage, which effectively solves the problem of material damage caused by the etching process in traditional Micro-LED chip production, improves the efficiency and stability of the chip, and provides the possibility for large-scale mass production of Micro-LED chips.

From a technical perspective, Jiang Zhenyu further introduced that this technology not only breaks the exclusive monopoly of foreign companies' chip technology in projection displays, but also solves the "stuck neck" problem in the projection industry. At the same time, "Qiu Shui Semiconductor" adopts the Hybrid Bonding 3D semiconductor packaging process and adopts advanced semiconductor processes to comprehensively improve the process technology level of Micro-LED chips, improve the chip yield and reduce costs to a certain extent. It is understood that "Qiu Shui Semiconductor" is the first domestic Micro-LED start-up company reported to have implemented an advanced 8-inch hybrid bonding process.

At present, the main products of "Qiushui Semiconductor" are Micro-LED chip products, which can be widely used in micro-projection and AR display fields.

The company's firstThe first-generation product is a 0.61-inch digital car light chip. Digital car lights are a new type of car lighting technology that uses Micro-LED chips to achieve more refined lighting control. Compared with traditional car lights, digital car lights can achieve pixel-level beam adjustment and reduce unnecessary light scattering and glare. Due to the high brightness and low energy consumption of Micro-LED chips, these car lights improve lighting efficiency while also reducing energy consumption.

In addition, Micro-LED technology responds faster, allowing the lights to quickly adapt to different driving conditions. The intelligent functions of digital car lights are also richer. They can be combined with the vehicle's intelligent system to provide adaptive lighting modes and even project navigation information on the road. These characteristics make digital car lights using Micro-LED chips far beyond the scope of traditional car lights in terms of performance and functionality.

Statista data shows that China's automotive LED lighting market will reach US$3.35 billion in 2021, and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.66% from 2022 to 2027. By 2027, the market size will be close to US$5.5 billion.

Currently, "Qiu Shui Semiconductor"'s first-generation car lighting chip has sent samples to customers, and it is expected to be mass-produced next year.

As for the team, "Qiushui Semiconductor" has a series of patents such as lossless Micro-LED technology routes. Its core technical team is one of the pioneers of hybrid bonding technology in China and has mature mass production process experience. Team members have profound professional knowledge and rich industry experience, and have achieved the development of hybrid bonding mass production processes with a minimum pitch of 0.7 microns.

Investors’ perspective:

Lu Jian, a partner of Angel Fund, said that Inno Angel Fund is optimistic about the next generation personal computing platform represented by XR and continues to invest in related fields. Micro LED is its ultimate display solution, but it is limited by the existing technology route and has not yet been applied on a large scale. The damage-free technology route pioneered by Dr. Jiang is expected to achieve high-yield, low-cost mass production and help the rapid development of related industries such as XR. After more than a year of hard work, Qiushui Semiconductor has completed process verification. We wish Qiu Shui Semiconductor will continue its efforts and achieve mass production as soon as possible.

Fang Nan, founding partner of Shanhan Optical Layer, said that Qiu Shui Semiconductor has just successfully verified the world's first damage-free (Damage-free) Micro-LED chip technology, and the team has completed technical verification and process verification in just one year since the company was established. The Gap-free Micro-LED technology route used by the company is the patented result of founder Dr. Jiang when he was studying for his PhD at Penn State. This technology incorporates the 8-inch wafer-level advanced hybrid bonding process technology and can achieve mass production of high-resolution, high-yield, low-cost Micro-LED chips. It is Shanhan Optolayer MiA key link in the layout of the cro-LED industry chain. From helping to establish Qiushui Semiconductor and becoming an angel investor, Shanhan Hanguang Layer has been fortunate to participate in and witness the rapid development of Qiushui team. We wish Qiushui Semiconductor digital car lighting products can successfully achieve mass production.