| Flexible large area electronics, especially for displays, is a rapidly growing field. Since hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin-film transistors (a-Si:H TFTs) have become the industry standard for liquid crystal displays, it makes sense that they be used in any transition from glass substrates to flexible substrates. The goal of this thesis work was to implement a-Si:H backplane technology on stainless steel and clear plastic substrates, with minimal recipe changes to ensure high device quality. When fabricating TFTs on flexible substrates many new issues arise, from thin-film fracture to overlay alignment errors. Our approach was to maintain elevated deposition temperatures (∼300°C) and engineer methods to minimize these problems, rather than reducing deposition temperatures. The resulting TFTs exhibit more stable operation than their low temperature counterparts and are therefore similar to the TFTs produced on glass. Two display projects using a-Si:H TFTs will be discussed in detail. They are an active-matrix organic light emitting display (AMOLED) on stainless steel and an active-matrix electrophoretic display (AMEPD) on clear plastic, with TFTs deposited at 250°C-280°C. Achieving quality a-Si:H TFTs on these substrates required addressing a host of technical challenges, including surface roughness and feature misalignment. Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) was also implemented on a clear plastic substrate as a possible alternative to a-Si:H. nc-Si:H TFTs can be deposited using the same techniques as a-Si:H but yield carrier mobilities one order of magnitude greater. Their large mobilities could enable high resolution OLED displays and system-on-panel electronics. |
