Matrix addressing for organic electroluminescent displays

The use of organic light emissive diodes (OLEDs) in flat panel displays is rapidly growing around the world. OLED-based displays are attractive, because they are lightweight, thin and compact. They do not exhibit viewing angle limitations as LCDs do. In principle they only use one glass plate (or one substrate plate), they need no back-light, no polarisers and no diffuser. Also, OLEDs need no alignment layers and there are no tilt angle requirements as in LCDs. In this paper, we present the major problems and limitations linked to the addressing of matrix-type displays using OLEDs. In particular, we show that active matrix addressing is necessary for high information content (HIC) displays and that for this particular application, polysilicon material is today the only serious candidate for thin film transistor fabrication. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.