Matthew Stevenson

Active matrix OLED using 150ºC a-Si TFT backplane built on flexible plastic substrate

Flexible displays fabricated using plastic substrates have a potential for being very thin, light weight, highly rugged with greatly minimized propensity for breakage, roll-to-roll manufacturing and lower cost. The emerging OLED display media offers the advantage of being a solid state and rugged structure for flexible displays in addition to the many potential advantages of an AM OLED over the currently dominant AM LCD. The current high level of interest in flexible displays is facilitating the development of the required enabling technologies which include development of plastic substrates, low temperature active matrix device and backplane fabrication, and display packaging. In the following we will first discuss our development efforts in the PEN based plastic substrates, active matrix backplane technology, low temperature (150°C) a-Si TFT devices and an AM OLED test chip used for evaluating various candidate designs. We will then describe the design, fabrication and successful evaluation and demonstration of a 64x64 pixel AM OLED test display using a-Si TFT backplane fabricated at 150°C on the flexible plastic substrate.

Active-Matrix Amorphous-Silicon TFTs Arrays at 180

An amorphous-silicon thin-film transistor (TFT) process with a 180 degC maximum temperature using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition has been developed on both novel clear polymer and glass substrates. The gate leakage current, threshold voltage, mobility, and on/off ratio of the TFTs are comparable with those of standard TFTs on glass with deposition temperature of 300 degC-350 degC. Active-matrix pixel circuits for organic light-emitting displays (LEDs) on both glass and clear plastic substrates were fabricated with these TFTs. Leakage current in the switching TFT is low enough to allow data storage for video graphics array timings. The pixels provide suitable drive current for bright displays at a modest drive voltage. Test active matrices with integrated polymer LEDs on glass showed good pixel uniformity, behaved electrically as expected for the TFT characteristics, and were as bright as 1500 cd/m2

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We have developed the worlds largest a-Si TFT based solution processed AMOLED full color display. In our 14.1″ WXGA demonstrator, we have realized the worlds best performance for solution-processed OLED materials in an active matrix display, while setting a higher standard for uniformity and image quality.

on Clear Plastic and Glass Substrates for Organic Light-Emitting Displays

Active-matrix organic/polyeric light emitting displays (AMOLEDs/AMPLEDs) are of great potentials for high information content display applications. They offer high brightness, fast response time, high image quality (high contrast, high gray levels and small pixel pitch size) and low power consumption. AMPLEDs are ideal for portable electronic devices such as web-phones, personal data assistants, GPS and handhold computers. AMPLEDs are especially suitable for motion picture applications. Since the image pixels consume power only when they are turned on, and only consume the power necessary for their corresponding brightness, video displays made with AMOLED/AMPLED reduce power consumption and extend display lifetime considerably. Motion picture applications also minimize image retention and optimize display homogeneity. In this presentation, we discuss our recent progress on AMPLEDs and compare their performance with that of AMLCD.