IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
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102 I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2026 The simple reality is that microLED devices are extremely thin and fragile, and any transfer process must avoid mechanical damage to the delicate devices while maintaining placement accuracy, often measured in a few micrometers. Furthermore, the economics of display production require that these transfers occur not one device at a time, but in massively parallel fashion. For what it's worth, I was invited to write about this topic for July's issue, but it was quite propitious as I have been friends since 2008 with and an advisor to Dr. Jayna Sheats, founder of Terecircuits (it has changed names over the years). Dr. Sheats is a bril- liant scientist with a PhD from Stanford and valuable experience as a researcher at HP Labs in Palo Alto. The reason I say "propitious" is because Sheats and her team at Terecircuits have developed a unique and useful technology called Terefilm that seems almost custom-designed for microLED assembly, though its usefulness goes far beyond. The novel photopolymer platform is particularly interesting in that, rather than relying on mechanical pickup and placement of individual devices, Tere- film enables temporary bonding and highly selec- F L E X I B L E T H I N K I N G CONVENTIONAL PICK-AND-PLACE MASS TRANSFER APPROACH Pick one LED device Pick thousands to millions of LEDs simultaneously Move one device Move entire arrays in a single operation Place one device Place complete pixel populations in parallel Repeat millions of times Repeat only a small number of transfer cycles Serial manufacturing process Highly parallel manufacturing process Throughput limited by placement speed Throughput scales with transfer area Mechanical handling of every device Reduced handling of individual devices Greater risk of emitter damage Lower mechanical stress on fragile microLEDs Placement errors accumulate over millions of operations Improved global placement accuracy and registration Increased opportunities for particle contamination Reduced contamination exposure Yield losses from repeated handling and placement Higher potential manufacturing yield Higher capital and operating costs Lower cost per transferred device Practical for larger LEDs and lower volumes Essential for ultra-small microLEDs and high-volume production Table 1: Conventional pick-and-place vs. mass transfer for microLED manufacturing