Tower teams with startup Tianyu on micro displays

Partners | February 27, 2024

By Peter Clarke

Foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Migdal Haemek, Israel) is working with Tianyi Microelectronics (Hangzhou, China), a provider of driver chips for micro-OLED and microLED displays.

The development is based on Tower’s 180nm and 65nm dedicated micro display backplane process flows, supporting current-driven OLED pixel designs.

Tianyi Micro is currently the sole provider in China of current-driven pixel designs and has selected Tower as its foundry partner for microdisplay backplane developments.

Tower offers dedicated flows for display backplanes include custom low-leakage devices, high voltage (up to 10V) pixels for high brightness displays, and in-pixel MIM capacitors, as well as tailor-made back end for customer-specific requirements. These flows include PDK support with modeling.

“Like CMOS image sensors before, OLED microdisplays have reached a point where standard CMOS flows are not meeting the image quality requirements. Future displays call for a dedicated flow with customized devices for yield and performance,” said Avi Strum, CTO of Tower Semiconductor, in a statement.

Tianyu

Lina Sun, CEO of Tianyi, said: “We chose Tower for its well-known continuous innovation in silicon-based OLED technology, including but not limited to ultra-low leakage MOS devices, and customized anodes for compact pixel circuit design.”

Tianyi Microelectronics (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd. was incorporated in Beijing, China in 2020, and has set up teams in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen. Since 2020, Tianyi Micro has produced several sizes of microOLED display driver ICs. Tianyi Micro is developing the TY130, a 1.3-inch microOLED backplane for spatial computing equipment. The TY130 is expected to launch in April 2024.

The microdisplay market is set to grow from 24 million units in 2023 to almost 90 million units in 2028, a compound annual growth rate of 67 percent, according to market analyst Omdia. The overall AR/VR market, dominated by VR and XR headsets already $1.15 billion in 2023.