The funding, according to the company, will ensure that it keeps pace with growing demand from its customers and partners in the $140 billion display market.
The company said that a multinational electronics giant is among the participants in the Series A funding round, which has been led by Ameba Capital and includes previous investor Speedinvest.
Porotech has created a new class of porous gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor material called PoroGaN, enabling the company's micro-LED products to deliver monochrome and full colour displays on a single indium gallium nitride (InGaN) material system. The system offers the brightness, efficiency and resolution that’s required for high-quality image projection against bright backgrounds – even outdoors in daylight.
Micro-LED displays are expected to play an important role in the next generation of TVs, wearables and smartphones. And GaN-based material technology is widely seen as the only technology that can deliver displays bright and efficient enough to meet the requirements of extended reality (XR) displays involving virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and/or mixed reality (MR).
Until now, the requirement to mix multiple material systems has complicated the manufacture of full-colour micro-LED displays – making the final products too expensive for mass-market applications. Porotech’s use of a single material system will open the door to mass manufacturing of micro-LED displays.
"Porotech's progress during its seed phase has been absolutely staggering – both technically and commercially," said Porotech CEO and co-founder Dr Tongtong Zhu. “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.”
