The evolution in terms of screens has always been the same, that of achieving more and more pixels, better representation of colors and higher refresh rates. Vertical Micro-LED technology promises to be one of the most significant advances in display quality for years to come.
The logic is simple, more pixels on the screen allow us to create higher quality and more detailed images, but little by little we are approaching the limits of human vision, which means that new screen technologies are beginning to be designed for more specific purposes.
What are vertical Micro-LEDs?
The pixels of the screens today are made up of 3 sub-pixels, which are very, very small LED lights, in which each one projects one of the three basic colors that are red, green and yellow. blue. Which in combination form the chrominance of each color and this in full when combined with the luminance. We are not going to go into the differences that exist between the different types of panel, but mainly all of them are based on this concept.
Well, MIT has developed vertical Micro-LEDs, whose concept is based on the fact that each of the sub-pixels are not next to each other horizontally, but stacked vertically, causing the area per pixel to decrease. to a third. The consequences? Well, that the density of pixels per inch becomes 9 times higher and, therefore, be able to reach 5000 pixels per inch.
Something that at first glance and given that many screens already exceed the limit of 300 dots per inch, it is unnecessary. What good is it for us that the pixels are so small if our limited vision will not be able to see them due to their size? Well, they have some application at the moment, although it is more of a niche, since it has never managed to take off.
Technology is very green at the moment
Despite the fact that Jeehwan Kim and Jiho Shin, the two inventors of vertical Micro-LEDs, have managed to create the minimum unit for each pixel and that it is capable of representing the entire range of colors, they still have a long way to go, from the moment in which they have not yet developed the active matrix in which all the pixels will be placed to have a complete screen and form a complete image.
Vertical Micro-LEDs in Virtual Reality?
However, there is a type of device that could greatly benefit from this technology and this is Virtual Reality, where due to the proximity of the screen to the player’s eyes, the maximum level of clarity has not been reached. There visual quality is measured by pixels per degree of view or PPD.
The ideal figure? The 60 PPD, a figure that is still far away even for the most advanced virtual reality headsets, but if it became standardized it would make even the most powerful graphics card fall short. If we take into account that VR fails to take off in front of the general public, we find that due to a lack of power, vertical MicroLEDs are not viable in the short or medium term. Although that is not the worst, there is no video interface to achieve the necessary refresh rates and we do not know at the moment if the vertical Micro-LEDs support them.
The key to 8K monitors?
When using a PC due to the distance between our eyes and the screen is shorter than when we use a television, we tend to use much smaller screens. The consequences of it? 4K resolution is completely new in many computers and 8K is not expected. The reason? We have discussed it before, the pixel density is too high for the human eye to notice the difference from one resolution to another.
It is not that we do not see this technology for 8K monitors, but rather that we do not believe that these are used in a massive way by the general public, especially for games, think that we are talking about moving 4 times more pixels than 4K and this is an increase of the same degree in memory, bandwidth and computing power.
