Graphical Abstract

Micro-light-emitting diodes (micro-LEDs) have emerged as a promising display technology featuring high resolution, wide color gamut, high contrast, flexibility, and long lifetime. However, there are severe challenges in full-color micro-LED, such as low efficiencies of red and green micro-LEDs, complex driving circuits for three-color micro-LEDs, and challenging mass transfer. Thus, converting blue light into red and green light by coupling color converters with blue LEDs is a reasonable strategy. Colloidal quantum dots (QDs) are an optimal candidate for color converters due to their high photoluminescence quantum yield, narrow emission peaks, small particle sizes, and solution processibility. Therefore, full-color micro-LEDs based on quantum dot color converters are attracting increasing attention. This review introduces micro-LED technology and the research progress of the full-color realization, and describes the associated technical challenges. Furthermore, it outlines the properties of QDs, patterning techniques, integration with micro-LEDs for achieving full color, and finally analyzes the challenges of applying QDs to micro-LEDs, demonstrating the application potential of QDs in achieving full-color of micro-LEDs, along with prospects for addressing current challenges.