Developing flexible OLED displays

Universal Display Corporation and Palo Alto research Center (PARC), a subsidiary of Xerox Corporation, has announced a collaboration to develop poly-silicon (poly-Si) thin film transistor (TFT) backplane technology on metal foil. The flexible OLED (Foled) and top-emitting OLED (Toled) technologies.

While OLED displays today require the use of transparent rigid substrates, such as glass, the combination of Universal Display's Toled and Foled technologies enable the novel use of a thin flexible metallic substrate as an alternative to glass. Along with providing added ruggedness for demanding military and consumer applications, the use of metallic substrates - which can withstand the high processing temperatures used in TFT manufacturing today - will accelerate the development of flexible TFT backplanes, currently a limiting factor for the commercialisation of flexible active matrix (Amoled) displays.

In addition, Toled technology can enhance visual display performance by increasing the effective aperture area of the display in comparison to conventional bottom-emitting Amoleds.

The fabrication of the poly-Si TFT arrays at PARC builds on its experience in developing TFT backplane technology for displays and image sensors, based on amorphous silicon, poly-silicon and polymer semiconductors.

The PARC poly-Si technology has recently been demonstrated in image sensor arrays containing pixel amplifiers and shift registers.