A novel pixel design for AM-OLED displays using nanocrystalline silicon TFTs

This paper presents a novel pixel design for active matrix organic light emitting diode (AM-OLED) displays using nanocrystalline silicon thin-film transistors (TFTs). The proposed pixel design can effectively reduce the variation of its stored display data caused by the leakage current of nanocrystalline silicon TFTs, which can in turn increase the contrast resolution of AM-OLED displays. With a proper setting of its capacitors, the proposed pixel design can achieve a 5.55× reduction on its display-data variation while requiring only a 1.15× write time when compared to the typical pixel design. The aperture ratio resulting from the layout of the proposed pixel design can also be maintained above 40%, which satisfies the specification of most AM-OLED displays. A series of simulations as well as measurement results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed pixel design.