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07 Jul 2010
New venture mLED is developing gallium nitride micro-pixellated LED (microLED) arrays for a range of applications.
Strathclyde University, UK, has secured a spin-out deal to form a company called mLED. The firm will pioneer the future advancement of microLED arrays, a technology that was developed in the university's Institute of Photonics which could find uses in applications such as neuroscience, microscopy and communications.
Micro-pixellated LEDs or microLEDs are devices that are made up of thousands of tiny emitters producing light in a compact and integrated package. Unlike other micro-display technologies, microLEDs are dense arrays of miniature light sources which are pattern programmable and do not require a plethora of external components, such as optics and switching matrices, to modulate the light pattern, thereby making them more compact and efficient.
Braveheart Investment Group led the £150,000 funding round into mLED, investing via both the Strathclyde Innovation Fund (SIF) and the Alpha EIS Fund. Scottish Enterprise's Scottish Seed Fund also participated in the round.
"There are only a few companies in the world that have recognized the opportunity and demonstrated capability in this area," said Jim Bonar, chief executive of mLED. "MicroLEDs have particularly strong potential for evolving life science markets such as neuroscience and for the emerging telecoms market of pico-projectors, as well as for printing, microscopy and next-generation general lighting arrangements. The power density, versatility and compactness of microLEDs makes them ideally suited for these applications."
According to Bonar, each of the microLEDs has enough light output to affect other materials, allowing actions such as the active illumination and stimulation of cells. They also have a switching speed fast enough for use in communications or in fluorescence lifetime imaging, which can be used to study cells. The firm is also selling demonstrator kits so that developers can see if the microLEDs fit with their own applications.
The microLED technology was developed at Strathclyde's Institute of Photonics by a research team led by Martin Dawson, the institute's director of research, associate director Erdan Gu and research technologist Gareth Valentine, all of whom will act as consultants to mLED.
Major funding to create this opportunity was also obtained from the Scottish Enterprise Proof of Concept Fund and from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Simon Andrews, business development manager at the Institute of Photonics, said: "We have had great pleasure in supporting Jim Bonar in the creation of mLED. The Institute recognized some time ago that microLEDs were a very promising area of technology and considerable research investment was made by public sources while we continued to develop the equipment. Research in new areas will carry on and we look forward to working with mLED in bringing this advancing technology to rapidly expanding marketplaces."
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