Process
Plastic Logic’s backplanes enable thin, light, robust and flexible electronic reader products.
To address the market opportunity for flexible active-matrix displays, Plastic Logic has developed the first process for printing electronic circuits on plastic substrates to be ramped-up to an industrial scale. Not only is the process capable of making incredibly thin, light and robust displays, it is considerably simpler than conventional amorphous silicon based processes.
In an active-matrix display, each dot on the display is controlled by an active switching element, usually a thin film transistor (TFT), and by the signals on an array of intersecting row and column electrodes. Up to now, the TFTs have been fabricated with amorphous silicon deposited at high temperature on a rigid glass substrate. This requires a complex process of multiple mask-based photolithography steps.
The array of switching elements and the row and column electrodes are fabricated on a substrate to create an active-matrix backplane. The backplane can be combined with many display frontplane technologies such as LCD, OLED or electrophoretic ‘electronic paper’ to make a display.
In the case of electronic readers, the most attractive frontplane technology is electronic paper. This has the appearance of paper and is bi-stable so that it only uses power when the image changes. A number of electronic reader products have been launched using electronic paper such as the Sony Reader and the iRex Illiad which both use electronic paper laminate from E Ink (E Ink Imaging Film® ).
Even though electronic paper is typically thin and flexible, a rigid display results when it is combined with a glass-based amorphous silicon backplane. Plastic Logic’s flexible backplane technology enables the display, and therefore the reader device itself, to become flexible, thin, light and robust so that it feels much more like a sheet of paper.
Plastic Logic's flexible backplane is combined with a frontplane material
(e.g. electronic paper) to make a flexible display.
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