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Cok

60.3: AMOLED Displays using Transfer-Printed Integrated Circuits

Ronald S. Cok*, John W. Hamer* Christopher A. Bower, Etienne Menard, and Salvatore Bonafede
Semprius Inc., 4915 Prospectus Dr., Suite C, Durham, NC, 27713, U.S.A.

Abstract
Active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays can be controlled by transfer-printed microscale silicon integrated circuits (ICs) in place of conventional thin-film transistors (TFTs). Such OLED displays are robust and exhibit excellent performance. The OLED pixels exhibit excellent uniformity, angular independence, color gamut, brightness, environmental robustness, and can be operated at very high frame rates.

Al Cathode

OLED Layers

ITO Anode

Pixel Definition Layer Patterned Metal

Color Filter

Polymer Layers

Chiplet

1.

Introduction
Glass Substrate

Conventional active-matrix OLED devices are driven by an array of thin-film transistors deposited over a substrate prior to OLED deposition. There exist today many alternative processes for making TFT backplanes, including by deposition of amorphous Si (a-Si), polycrystalline Si, microcrystalline Si, various semiconductive metal oxides, and organic semiconductor compounds. To achieve a high-quality display, these TFTs must precisely control the current in each light-emitting OLED pixel so that the overall display has uniform luminance (no mura), without hysteresis, and with sufficient mobility and control to provide at least four decades of luminance. In addition, the backplane must be stable with use over time and under a wide variety of environmental conditions, be scalable to large-size glass for large displays, and have low cost. The currently available TFT backplane technologies, many of which were developed for noncurrent-driven, active-matrix LCD displays, do not meet all of these requirements. In sharp contrast, transistors made in single-crystal silicon wafers by modern semiconductor foundries have very high mobility (greater than 1000 cm2/V*s compared to 100 cm2/V*s or less for typical thin-film transistors), uniformity, and stability compared to such TFT technologies. AMOLED displays using small, transfer-printed integrated circuits made in crystalline silicon have been constructed [1]. Transfer printing is a new massively parallel assembly technology [2-4] that enables the fabrication of large arrays of high-performance microscale devices onto rigid or flexible substrates. The devices (chiplets) are first fabricated on a source wafer, and then released by removing a sacrificial layer that exists underneath the semiconductor circuit. A microstructured elastomeric stamp (designed to match the source wafer) is then used to pick up and print the devices onto a target substrate. This process has been described in more detail elsewhere [4]. The OLED active-matrix backplanes were made by transferprinting silicon integrated circuits (ICs) onto display glass substrates. The pixel driver circuits were designed and

Figure 1. Device cross section. fabricated using a commercially available silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS foundry process. Figure 1 is a cross-section diagram of the completed structure. Following printing, the substrates undergo an oven bake to fully cure underlying polymer layers. The substrates can then undergo normal fabrication procedures (spin-coat, spin-rinse, dry, etc.). A planarizing dielectric layer of polymer was applied (by spincoating) over the ICs and then removed from the display-seal area and vias. A single metal layer was deposited and patterned to form the backplane row and column wiring. Another planarizing polymer layer is coated over the wiring layer and a second photolithographic process is used to expose the wiring level and form an ITO lower electrode for the OLED.

200 m

Figure 2. Display substrate after OLED and cathode deposition.

This work was carried out at Eastman Kodak Company prior to December 2009.

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ISSN 0097-966X/10/4102-0902-$1.00 2010 SID

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Sub-pixel Color 0, 15, 30, 45, 60 degrees

0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 CIE y 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 Red Green Blue White

Figure 3. Operating color OLED device with chiplet controller displaying an edge. OLED electroluminescent layers were then formed over the lower electrode using conventional processes. A common, upper electrode was formed over the pixel region. Figure 2 is a micrograph of fully interconnected chiplets buried beneath the organic and cathode layers. The authors constructed a number of monochrome and color AMOLED devices. The color devices used a white emitter with color filters in an RGBW pixel arrangement. Figure 3 is a photograph of an operating color display. The IC design implemented a conventional two-transistor, one-capacitor driving circuit structure and had 13 connection pads (as seen in Figure 2), one for power, four for data, four for select, and four for anode connections. Each printed IC is located in the center of four associated light-emitting elements.

0.2

0.4 CIE x

0.6

0.8

Figure 5. Color and white-point change with angle in xy CIE space. The polymer layer originally used for early displays was benzocylcobutene (BCB) because it readily planarizes in thick layers and is therefore well suited for planarizing over the chiplet. However, photosensitive BCB has a decidedly yellow color that can strongly affect the color of light emitted. The authors replaced the BCB layer with an alternative electronicgrade epoxy that was more neutral, transparent, and heat stable. Using this layer, a tandem white emitter, and thin color filters [5], a display color gamut of 93% was achieved. Figure 5 illustrates the angular color and white-point performance. Figure 6 shows a full-color image on the display. The display was designed as the corner 32 32 pixels of an HDTV, so artifacts related to the reduced picture size should be ignored.

2.

Experimental Results

A variety of AMOLED display attributes were tested. Mechanical robustness under thermal stress was evaluated by repeatedly temperature-cycling the display. Figure 4 shows that the display was ultimately cycled between -20C and 90C at 15minute intervals. The display device did not fail in any of the test cycles.
AMOLED Thermal Cycling
100 80 60 Temp (C) 40 20 0 -20 0 10 20 30 40 50 Time (hours) 60 70 80 90 100

Figure 4. AMOLED thermal cycling; the device was tested during the cycles marked in red.

Figure 6. Operating color OLED device with image.

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is superior to thin-film circuits and has no significant impact on the color, lifetime, or angular performance of OLED displays.
1.1 Select On -2 Volts (uV) Select Off Lum On -4 Lum Off 0.5 -6 0.3 0.1 -4 -2 0 2 Time (us) 4 6 8 10 0.7 0.9

Pixel Switching Time

0

By using chiplets to control AMOLED displays, there is no need to form conventional thin-film transistors on a backplane, greatly reducing the cost and complexity of the manufacturing process.

4.

Acknowledgements

The authors express their appreciation for the help given to them by the fabrication and test staff at Semprius and Eastman Kodak Company.

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5.

References
Menard, and S. Bonafede, AMOLED Displays Using Transfer-Printed Integrated Circuits, SID 2009 International Symposium Digest of Technical Papers vol. 15, p. 947 (2009).

[1] J. Hamer, R. Cok, G. Parrett, D. Winters, C. Bower, E.

Figure 7. Pixel response time. The driving signal is in volts (scale on right) and the luminance response is measured in photodetector microvolts (scale on left). Control circuits formed in crystalline silicon provide improved uniformity, faster switching speed, and greater current than thinfilm devices, either amorphous or polysilicon. Light-emitting OLED materials turn on and off very rapidly and, when coupled with fast switching circuits, can support very fast frame rates. Using chiplet control, the OLED pixels were separately driven on in 2s and then off in 2s for a pixel switching frequency of 500 kHz, as shown in Figure 7. Chiplet control not only provides high-speed operation, but can also provide larger currents. An OLED device was destructively tested by increasing the drive current to the maximum level available in the test circuit. At that level, the AMOLED exhibited 11,000 nits output with a 50% aperture ratio.

[2] E. Menard, K.J. Lee, D.-Y. Khang, R. G. Nuzzo, and J.A.

Rogers, A Printable Form of Silicon for High Performance Thin Film Transistors on Plastic Substrates, Applied Physics Letters, 84(26), 5398-5400 (2004).

[3] M.A. Meitl, Z.-T. Zhu, V. Kumar, K.J. Lee, X. Feng, Y.Y.
Huang, I. Adesida, R.G. Nuzzo, and J.A. Rogers, Transfer Printing by Kinetic Control of Adhesion to an Elastomeric Stamp, Nature Materials 5, 33-38 (2006).

[4] C.A. Bower, E. Menard, and P.E. Garrou, Transfer Printing:

An Approach for Massively Parallel Assembly of Microscale Devices, Electronic Components and Technology Conference (2008).

[5] M.J. Helber, P.J. Alessi, M. Burberry, S. Evans, M.C. Brick,

D.R. Diehl, and R.S. Cok, SID 2007 International Symposium Digest of Technical Papers 38, 1022 (2007).

3.

Conclusion

Color AMOLED displays using transfer-printed integrated circuit backplanes in an RGBW format with color filters have been demonstrated. The overall performance of the controlling circuits

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