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Scalable AMOLED Technologies for TV

Application

Conference Paper · January 2008

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 Scalable AMOLED Technologies for TV Application
T.Tsujimura, S.Mizukoshi, N.Mori, K.Miwa, Y.Maekawa, M.Kohno, K.Onomura, K.Mameno,
T.Anjiki, A.Kawakami, S.Vanslyke*
Kodak Japan, 3-20-12 Shin-Yokohama, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa 222-0033, Japan
* Eastman Kodak Company, 1999 Lake Ave, Rochester, NY 14650-2110, USA

ABSTRACT 3. Uniformity Improvement

To make large AMOLED displays happen securely, Since the first AMOLED was reported, many uniformity
scalability of technologies in terms of display size and correction techniques have been proposed.
[11][12][13][14][15][16]
mother substrate size is very important. From the point of Each technology has merits as well as
view of lifetime and yield, the GMC compensation method disadvantages. Digital driving is good for low power
has many benefits due to its large aperture ratio and consumption and uniformity, but has the problem of faster
simple pixel circuit feature. To ramp up large AMOLED OLED luminance degradation. Voltage programming can
display manufacturing quickly, the cause of yield loss use similar driver IC as do LCD, but cannot compensate
should be minimized. The White + color filter (CF) for the mobility variation. Current programming can
approach can deliver high production yield and compensate for both mobility and V TH variation, but has
performance, by combining it with RGBW pixel layout, the less accuracy in lower gray levels. Also current
appropriate driving algorithm and high-efficiency white programming needs special driver IC, which is more
formulation. 8.1”AMOLED display was fabricated only costly than other solutions.
with scalable technologies as a proof.
1. INTRODUCTION
Since the first practical OLED device was reported by
C.Tang and S.VanSlyke in 1987, the first boom of
AMOLED display products occurred rather recently,
evidenced mostly in small displays for mobile devices,
such as cell phones, portable TVs, portable media players,
etc. Although the first relatively large AMOLED products
have begun manufacture and sales, the industry still
needs to establish manufacturability to compete with
other display technologies, such as LCDs. To securely go
to larger display size and to achieve low cost Fig. 1 Kodak Elite Vision KTEL-30W portable TV
manufacturing, “scalability” of technologies is very using GMC compensation
important in terms of display size and mother glass Among all of these technologies, external
substrate size. This paper describes how to design an compensation is promising because the accuracy can be
OLED display by scalable technology combination, which improved by a good algorithm and can be implemented
would lead to the success of large AMOLED TV launch. with minimal added cost due to the very rapid price
2. Issues related to the AMOLED erosion of the memories. Especially, GMC (Global Mura
[17][18]
The Excimer-Laser Annealed (ELA) LTPS TFT Compensation) technology, which is used for the
backplane has been widely used for AMOLED displays Kodak Elite Vision AMOLED 1-Seg TV KTEL-30W (Fig. 1),
[1][2]
Although ELA-LTPS TFT shows good TFT shows very good compensation accuracy. Fig. 2 shows
performance with high mobility, which makes circuit the compensation result and Fig. 3 shows the actual GMC
integration possible, the performance variation of driver compensation tool used for manufacturing.
TFT causes non-uniformity of display luminance. Also the
ELA process has the limitation of display size and in
substrate size, which increases manufacturing cost.
Alternate backplane solutions with scalability to larger
sizes and with a low cost feature have been reported to
manage this situation. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Although many of
these alternate technologies can successfully eliminate
ELA-specific Mura (Mura: non uniformity) like
vertical/horizontal streak Mura, other causes, such as
cleaning, doping and etching generate other types of
Mura. Low-cost, high-quality Mura correction will retain its
importance even in the next generation backplane.
Regarding OLED processing, many of the current
AMOLED products use shadow mask for RGB patterning,
which has been thought to have no scalability. To
facilitate make large AMOLED display production, it is
necessary to develop an alternative patterning solution.
As a large display is subject to a larger number of defects Fig. 2 AMOLED display with (upper) and without
than a small display, high-yield strategy is very important (lower) GMC compensation
for the production of large displays. The GMC method requires very simple pixel circuit

T.Tsujimura, S.Mizukoshi, N.Mori, K.Miwa, Y.Maekawa, M.Kohno, K.Onomura, K.Mameno, T.Anjiki, A.Kawakami, S.Vanslyke,
"Scalable AMOLED Technologies for TV Application", IDW 2008 Digest, p.145 (2008).
configuration, such as the 2T1C circuit, so high aperture
ratio and high yield can be obtained, which is necessary
for large, long-lasting televisions and is a good candidate
technology for the large AMOLED TVs.
Fig. 3 GMC compensation tool
Fig. 4 GMC block diagram
4. Low Cost Manufacturing
4.1 Yield simulation to select the best color patterning
approach
When a large display is manufactured, it is very
important to assess how much yield can be expected
using the technology. To estimate the yield, the Poisson
equation has been widely used in the semiconductor and
TFT-LCD world. [19]
The probability of having the exact k point defects is
given by the following Poisson equation.
λkSC
PSC {k} = e −λSC Eq. 1
k!
where λsc is the average number of point defects per
display.
When N SCT is the fault pixel criteria, the display yield
relative to the point defects can be described as,
N SCT
λkSC
∑
YSC = e −λSC Eq. 2
k =0 k!
In the case of OLEDs, the unlit point defect is one of
the major causes of yield loss. It is important to
characterize how manufacturing yield behaves when the
display size becomes larger. Normally, many of the point
defects can be categorized into two: intra-layer short and
inter-layer short. Many of the intra-layer short, for example,
intra-layer electrode-electrode short, is proportional to the
electrode length.
On the other hand, many of the inter-layer short, such
as the cathode-anode short, is proportional to the area of
cathode-anode overlap, which is almost proportional to
the display area. In the case when the point defect
number is dominated by cathode-anode overlap, which is
the worst case in terms of yield behavior, the probability of
point defects in a display can be simulated by Eq.1. The
simulated result is shown in Fig. 5.
T.Tsujimura, S.Mizukoshi, N.Mori, K.Miwa, Y.Maekawa, M.Kohno, K.Onomura, K.Mameno, T.Anjiki, A.Kawakami, S.Vanslyke,
"Scalable AMOLED Technologies for TV Application", IDW 2008 Digest, p.145 (2008).
0.4
0.35
2-inch
0.3
8-inch
0.25 14-inch
Probability
20-inch
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
x10
x20
x30
x40
x50
x60
x70
x80
x90
x0
x100
(Number of point defect) / (2-inch point defect average)
Fig. 5 Point defect increase using worst-case
model
As the fault pixel criteria of large display and small
display does not change that much depend on the display
size, large display tends to cause poor yield if the defect
density is not improved enough. This is why low defect
density is important for large display and why the choice
of low defect density technology is very critical for large
display manufacturing. It implies a little increase in the
defect density due to lack of technology maturity can lead
to the big yield loss.
Though many patterning technologies currently exist,
such as White + CF, laser transfer technologies, ink jet
technologies, etc…, White+CF technology would be the
safest approach to quickly ramp up the large AMOLED
display manufacturing, as it is a combination of already
existing and already qualified technologies.
4.2 White + Color filter platform for better
performance
Although the white + color filter approach has benefits
in terms of its mature technology, the light emitted by a
white OLED device is absorbed by the color filter, which
may cause performance loss. To cope with this situation,
several methods have been proposed by Eastman Kodak
Company, supported by its photo-imaging knowledge.
4.2.1 Statistics of displayed images
Fig. 6 shows the histogram of the CIE (x,y) color
coordinate of picture image dots, analyzed by an actual
TV-image set.[20][21] It clearly shows that a very large
percentage of the color shown in the television program is
close to white and the pure colors like pure R,G,B are
very rarely displayed. The same trend was also observed
in the still image library. A total of 13,000 still images
taken by DSC showed that almost all of the color taken by
DSC is close to white. [22] (Fig.7) This implies that the
natural surface colors can be expressed by mostly
white-gray-black images with the slight addition of pure
color primaries. This is why white subpixel would deliver
large merit in the display design.
Fig. 6 Histogram of color probability from TV-image
database [20][21]
 Fig. 7 Histogram of color probability from still
[22]
image database taken by digital still camera
4.2.2 W-RGB method and W-RGBW method
As most of the natural colors are close to white,
W-RGBW pixel configuration gives a better performance
benefit than does W-RGB pixel configuration. (“W-RGB”
means the RGB pixel configuration with white + color filter
technology. This notation is to avoid the confusion
between W-RGB and RGB–side-by-side technology.
Similarly, “W-RGBW” signifies the RGBW pixel
configuration with white + color filter technology.) As
shown in Fig. 8, RGB subpixels experience large light
absorption by the color filter. However, most of the colors
shown in the display are almost white as stated, and the
absorption by the RGB subpixel color filter does not
contribute to display power consumption significantly, the
power consumption is nearly decided by the white
subpixel efficiency, which is very high. This also means
that color filter for higher color gamut with larger light
absorption, does not increase the display power
consumption very much in the case of W-RGBW
configuration.
Fig. 8 Comparison between W-RGB method and
W-RGBW method (An example in [24])
4.2.3 RGBW rendering algorithm to make maximum
use of white subpixel
Normally in the LCD field, RGBW four subpixel design
has been used to increase the display luminance,
sacrificing the color purity. However, for OLEDs, the
RGBW rendering algorithm with efficiency and lifetime
improvement without any impact on color purity has been
[23]
reported. Fig. 9 describes that method. When a color in
the G-B-W triangle is displayed, G, B, W subpixels are
used, while R is turned off. (Region-1) When a color is in
B-R-W triangle, B, R, W subpixels are operated and G is
turned off. (Region-2) When a color in the R-G-W triangle
is displayed, R, G, W subpixels operate and B is turned
off. (Region-3)
T.Tsujimura, S.Mizukoshi, N.Mori, K.Miwa, Y.Maekawa, M.Kohno, K.Onomura, K.Mameno, T.Anjiki, A.Kawakami, S.Vanslyke,
"Scalable AMOLED Technologies for TV Application", IDW 2008 Digest, p.145 (2008).
Fig. 9 RGBW for OLED rendering method by
M.Murdoch et al. [23]
This algorithm makes maximum use of white subpixels
without any sacrifice in the color gamut of the display. The
actual implementation of this method is shown in Fig. 10.
[24][25]
Power consumption was compared between the
W-RGB panel and W-RGBW panel with the same image
set. Almost half of the power consumption savings with
the W-RGBW method were observed when compared
with the W-RGB method
Fig. 10 Power consumption comparison between
W-RGB pixel configuration and W-RGBW pixel
configuration (Two formulation cases plotted.) [24][25]
Thus, white OLED technology can fully enjoy the
benefit of RGBW pixel configuration. (We need to note
that the LCD cannot fully enjoy this merit, because RGBW
pixel configuration decreases the out-going light due to
aperture ratio loss in the case of LCDs, while OLEDs, with
RGBW configuration, can retain its luminance by keeping
the driver TFT current.)
4.2.4 White formulation most suitable for the RGBW
algorithm
Fig. 11 shows the various white OLED emission
spectrums and human eye sensitivity. As most of the
power of W-RGBW is consumed by the white subpixel, it
is important that the white subpixel have higher efficiency.
Although RGB “peaky” (3-peak white in R, G and B)
white can more easily produce pure colors with a color
filter, it does not give good efficiency, because the
spectrum lacks the yellow component, which is very
sensitive to the human eye. RGB+Y emission gives the
best efficiency that leads to the best efficiency and lifetime.
White OLED formulation with very high efficiency will be
 reported separately. [26] 7. References
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Mameno, R. Nishikawa, T. Omura, S. Matsumoto,
Commercialization team and Eastman Kodak Company’s “Full-Color AMOLED with RGBW Pixel Pattern,” Asia
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Vision AMOLED 1-seg TV KTEL-30W and LG Display for [24] A. D. Arnold, T. K. Hatwar, M. V. Hettel, P. J. Kane, M. E.
3-inch AMOLED display. Miller, M. J. Murdoch, J. P. Spindler, S. A. Van Slyke,
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Display 2004, 25-2 (2004).
ULVAC for their collaboration to fabricate an 8-inch [25] J. P. Spindler, T. K. Hatwar, M. E. Miller, A. D. Arnold, M. J.
AMOLED prototype with white technology. Murdoch, P. J. Kane, J, E. Ludwicki, S. A. Van Slyke,
The authors thank Toyo ink MFG. Ltd, especially Mr. “Lifetime- and Power-Enhanced RGBW Displays Based on
White OLEDs,” SID 2005 Digest (2005), p.36.
Takashi Saito and Ms. Kaoru Yajima for their generous [26] T. K. Hatwar et al., EL2008 Digest (2008).
collaboration

T.Tsujimura, S.Mizukoshi, N.Mori, K.Miwa, Y.Maekawa, M.Kohno, K.Onomura, K.Mameno, T.Anjiki, A.Kawakami, S.Vanslyke,
"Scalable AMOLED Technologies for TV Application", IDW 2008 Digest, p.145 (2008).

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