Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

This project addresses two important sectors in the display industry - active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) display panels and LED video walls. Christie Digital and University of Waterloo (UW) are teaming up to develop, through innovative approaches, key technologies enabling high quality, affordable AMOLED display panels and advanced LED video walls. Increasing demand for high-definition, large area displays at affordable prices poses challenges to the current AMOLED technology. The principal barrier is the lack of superior transistor technology to build the backplane electronics. Several approaches such as polysilicon thin film transistors (TFTs) and oxide TFTs are actively pursued but a viable solution is yet to be found. Building on the outcome of their initial investigative research, Christie and UW are embarking on a new technology to build the backplanes on a novel ceramic/Si hybrid platform. By producing substrates with planarized, single-crystal Si spheres embedded in the ceramic host, and building high performance transistor pixel circuits, the proposed technology meets both the performance and cost requirements of the backplane. This backplane technology will also directly benefit the LED video wall technology, which is currently used mainly in passive matrix addressing schemes. The high performance transistors of the backplane deliver required current levels for active matrix addressing. Another important challenge for AMOLED displays is the color patterning. The current methods of side-by-side OLED patterning or use of filters or color changing media have technological drawbacks. This project will also develop an efficient color-patterning scheme by utilizing photon down-shifting quantum dots (QD). The proposed scheme that employs QD films tuned to desired, narrow emission, bandwidths will not only address the color management challenges but also removes some current restrictions in OLED deposition. Benefitting from existing research infrastructure and expertise of the applicants in the materials, devices, and circuits areas, this project will develop manufacture-ready processes for backplane electronics and color-patterning and demonstrate advanced display prototypes.