Monolithic integration of display driver circuits and displays manufactured by screen printing

• Published in: Flexible and printed electronics Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 24001 - 24012
• Main Authors: Andersson Ersman, Peter, Zabihipour, Marzieh, Tu, Deyu, Lassnig, Roman, Strandberg, Jan, Åhlin, Jessica, Nilsson, Marie, Westerberg, David, Gustafsson, Göran, Berggren, Magnus, Forchheimer, Robert, Fabiano, Simone
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 01.06.2020
• Subjects: Display driver circuits; Electroactive material; Electrochemical switching; Electrochromic displays; Manufacture; Manufacturing process; Monolithic integrated circuits; Monolithic integration; Organic electrochemical transistor (OECTs); organic electrochemical transistors; organic electrochromic displays; Screen printing; Screen printing methods; Timing circuits
• ISSN: 2058-8585; 2058-8585
• DOI: 10.1088/2058-8585/ab7ab4

Here, we report all-screen printed display driver circuits, based on organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), and their monolithic integration with organic electrochromic displays (OECDs). Both OECTs and OECDs operate at low voltages and have similar device architectures, and, notably, they rely on the very same electroactive material as well as on the same electrochemical switching mechanism. This then allows us to manufacture OECT-OECD circuits in a concurrent manufacturing process entirely based on screen printing methods. By taking advantage of the high current throughput capability of OECTs, we further demonstrate their ability to control the light emission in traditional light-emitting diodes (LEDs), where the actual LED addressing is achieved by an OECT-based decoder circuit. The possibility to monolithically integrate all-screen printed OECTs and OECDs on flexible plastic foils paves the way for distributed smart sensor labels and similar Internet of Things applications.