The funding aims to ensure the company keeps pace with growing demand from its customers and partners in the $140bn display market. A multinational electronics giant is among the Series A round’s participants, which has been led by Ameba Capital and includes previous investor Speedinvest.
Porotech has created PoroGaN, a new class of porous gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor material. This is enabling the company’s micro-LED products to deliver monochrome and full-colour displays on a single indium gallium nitride (InGaN) material system, with the brightness, efficiency and resolution required for high-quality image projection against bright backgrounds including outdoors in daylight. The company said its red micro-LED product is ‘already achieving best-in-class performance’.
Micro-LED displays are expected to play a key role in next-generation TVs, wearables and smartphones. GaN-based material technology is widely seen as the only technology that can deliver displays bright and efficient enough to meet requirements of extended reality (XR) displays involving virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and/or mixed reality (MR).
Project aims for ultimate micro-displays
Until now, the requirement to mix multiple material systems has complicated the manufacture of full-colour micro-LED displays, making final products expensive for mass-market applications.
Porotech’s CEO and co-founder, Dr Tongtong Zhu, said the company’s progress during its seed phase has been technically and commercially ‘staggering’, commenting: “We have delivered the world’s first InGaN-based red micro-LEDs and displays and have set up production of our first products — shipping to some of the biggest global names in display technology.
“This latest funding will accelerate our work to ensure that PoroGaN drives the commercialisation of XR glasses and the new wave of user interface innovation. It will help us to continue our expansion plans to meet demand and to continue to provide world-class service and products to our rapidly expanding customer and partner base.”
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