Printed polymer and a-Si TFT backplanes for flexible displays

The need for low cost, flexible, thin film transistor (TFT) display backplanes has focused attention on new processing techniques and materials. We report the development of TFT backplane technology based entirely on jet-printing, using a combination of additive and subtractive processing, to print active materials or etch masks. The technique eliminates the use of photolithography and has the potential to reduce the array manufacturing cost. The printing technique is demonstrated with both amorphous silicon and polymer semiconductor TFT arrays, and we show results of small prototype displays.