As part of their partnership formed last year (Display Monitor Vol 20 No 26), the Cambridge Graphene Centre and Plastic Logic have demonstrated a flexible display using graphene in the pixels’ electronics. It is the first time that graphene has been used in a transistor-based flexible device, they said.
Graphene is a strong, lightweight and flexible 2D material, formed of sheets of carbon atoms. It is more flexible than materials such as ITO and more transparent than metal films.
The prototype display is an active matrix electrophoretic unit. Unlike conventional units, the backplane uses a solution-processed graphene electrode – more efficient than the sputtered metal electrode in Plastic Logic’s convention devices. The electrode was patterned with micron-scale features to complete the backplane.
Low temperatures – below 100 deg – were used in the production of the backplane, which has a pixel density of more than 150ppi. Plastic Logic’s organic TFT technology was also used. An electrophoretic imaging film was then combined with the backplane to create ‘an ultra-low power and durable display’. In the future, LCD or OLED technology could be used to achieve full colour and video functionality. In fact, the work was boosted by a grant from the UK Technology Strategy Board, within the ‘realising the graphene revolution’ initiative. The initiative aims to produce an advanced, full colour OLED graphene-based display within 12 months.
