Plessey is continuing to invest in its manufacturing facility to boost their proprietary microLED display capabilities and with the purchase of metal and oxide chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) and associated tools from Axus will enable the wafer-scale bonding of microLED wafers to high-performance CMOS backplanes.
A number of Axus CMP and Scrubber systems have been deployed to enable critical wafer planarisation and preparation for wafer-scale bonding. Wafer-level bonding poses significant technical challenges and even with the right equipment requires extensive know-how and refined processes. Shortly after installation of the systems in 2019, Plessey was able to achieve the world’s first functional wafer-level bonded GaN-on-Si monolithic 1080p 0.7” diagonal 8-micron pixel-pitch microLED active-matrix display.
Plessey has further optimised these systems and processes to achieve a successful wafer to wafer bond of a much smaller monochrome native Green 1080p microLED display 0.26” diagonal to a 3-micron pixel-pitch backplane display system engineered by Compound Photonics, creating over two million individual electrical bonds.
The formation of the Plessey/Axus partnership has led to the development of critical CMP processes for various materials key to enabling Plessey’s proprietary monolithic GaN-on-Si technology.
Going forward, the partnership will support scaling the technology for high-volume manufacture on the existing Axus equipment set and in the near future Axus’ new state-of-the-art, high flexibility/throughput Capstone CMP System, released to the market in late 2019.
Commenting Mike Snaith, Chief Operating Officer at Plessey, explained: “These tool platforms are enabling Plessey to advance its world-leading proprietary GaN on Silicon monolithic microLED technology. Our ever-expanding investment in our manufacturing facility in the UK is allowing Plessey to innovate rapidly and deliver leading-edge technology for AR and other display applications.”