“Hongxing Jiang, Jingyu Lin and their colleagues developed the technology in 2000 and now see their patented research gaining popularity in today’s society.
The patent number is 6,410,940. It is titled “Micro-size LED and detector arrays for mini-displays, hyperbright light emitting diodes, lighting and UV detector and imaging sensor,” and it disclosed a tiny LED with a size around 20 microns (one micron equals one-millionth of a meter), or micro-LED, as well as micro-LED arrays.
The patent was filed more than 17 years ago with several applications imagined by its inventors, Hongxing Jiang and Jingyu Lin. They thought the best use for micro-LEDs would be for small displays and wearable displays that could be used anywhere and would eventually revolutionize the traditional displays and projectors.
“We thought it was interesting to see what kind of new properties would come out of this very small size LED,” Jiang said. “As soon as we started talking about this, then the questions came as to what kind of things you can use from this. We thought about microdisplays and micro-size projectors, we thought about wearable displays and their related applications.””