In recent years, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have emerged as a prominent display technology. Efficient manufacturing of high quality thin-film transistors (TFT) is necessary for the production of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) based displays, with the quality of the TFT backplane directly affecting image quality. Low-temperature polycrystalline-Si (LTPS) TFT technology, in the form of excimer-laser-annealing (ELA), is an obvious candidate for OLED displays. Unfortunately, modern ELA methods are hindered by low efficiency in terms of manufacturing capabilities, which is especially problematic for large display applications such as OLED TVs. This technology is a novel ELA scheme, called advanced excimer-laser-annealing (AELA), which significantly increases the rate of crystallization, effectively raising the manufacturing efficiency and throughput. AELA takes advantage of the specific requirements of OLED displays to circumvent fundamental issues with the practicality of conventional ELA methods for use in commercial manufacturing. This technology may make the use of ELA for large OLED display manufacturing a realistic and practical solution for the production of high quality TFT backplanes.
This technology substantially increases the "per-power" rate of crystallization over conventional ELA methods. By taking advantage of the specific requirements for OLED TV applications, the number of laser pulses needed to uniformly crystallize the polycrystalline-silicon is reduced. This is accomplished by scanning the excimer-laser at a constant, high velocity, while controlling the intensity and geometry of the beam so that crystallization occurs with spatial precision. This is opposed to conventional ELA technologies that scan at a low velocity or waste time and energy accelerating and decelerating the translation of the beam. Additionally, this technology can be easily implemented and retrofitted to existing ELA manufacturing setup, making AELA a flexible and efficient platform for large OLED display manufacturing.
Patent Pending (WO/2013/172965)
Tech Ventures Reference: IR CU12317
