Press releases
Please quote Nature Materials as the source of these items.
January 2004
Philips demonstrate flexible paper-like display
The previous decade has seen great improvements in the performance of flat-screen displays. But because they rely on silicon-based electronics grown on glass, they are still too costly and too rigid for many applications, such as electronic paper. In the February issue of Nature Materials, Gerwin Gelinck and co-workers, at Philips Research Eindhoven, demonstrate a flexible, active-matrix display with paper-like appearance that overcomes both these limitations by being made almost entirely of plastic.
The integrated electronic circuits that can control the 64x64 pixel display consist of 1,888 organic transistors, and represent the largest such circuits reported to date. The use of organic transistors in place of silicon transistors not only leads to significant potential cost-savings (as they can be processed at room temperature from solution) but means they can be grown directly onto a flexible plastic screen. By including most of the circuitry needed to drive the display as a whole into these on-screen electronics, the authors demonstrate the potential to reduce the cost of these displays even further. Moreover, they have optimized this circuitry to operate at a speeds of up to 5 kHz - ten times faster than has been demonstrated before using organic electronics, and sufficient to run video.
Although the size and resolution of the plastic display still has some way to go to reach that of modern silicon-based active-matrix displays, the work provides an important next step towards the development of low-cost electronic paper.
Flexible active-matrix displays and shift registers based on solution-processed organic transistors pp106-110
Gerwin H. Gelinck, H. Edzer A. Huitema, Erik Van Veenendaal, Eugenio Cantatore, Laurens Schrijnemakers, Jan B. P. H. Van Der Putten, Tom C. T. Geuns, Monique Beenhakkers, Jacobus B. Giesbers, Bart-hendrik Huisman, Eduard J. Meijer, Estrella Mena Benito, Fred J. Touwslager, Albert W. Marsman, Bas J. E. Van Rens and Dago M. De Leeuw
Published online: 25 January 2004 | doi 10.1038/nmat1061
