Cc. Wu et al., INTEGRATION OF ORGANIC LEDS AND AMORPHOUS SI TFTS ONTO FLEXIBLE AND LIGHTWEIGHT METAL FOIL SUBSTRATES, IEEE electron device letters, 18(12), 1997, pp. 609-612
We report the integration of organic light emitting devices (OLED's) a
nd amorphous Si (a-Si) thin-film transistors (TFT's) on both glass, an
d unbreakable and lightweight thin stainless steel foil substrates. Th
e doped-polymer OLED's were built following fabrication of driver TFT'
s in a stacked structure. Due to the opacity of the steel substrate, t
op-emitting OLED structures were developed. It is shown that the a-Si
TFT's provide adequate current levels to drive the OLED's at video bri
ghtness (similar to 100 cd/m(2)). This work demonstrates that lightwei
ght and rugged TFT backplanes with integrated OLED's are essential ele
ments for robust and highly portable active-matrix emissive flat panel
displays.