Single-Technology-Based Statistical Calibration for High-Performance Active-Matrix Organic LED Displays

Active-matrix organic light-emitting-diode (AMOLED) displays based on amorphous hydrogenated silicon (a-Si:H) thin-film transistors (TFTs) are the state of the art in display technology, owing to the feasilibility of low-cost fabrication and accessability to well-established TFT-LCD fabrication. While the a-Si:H TFT offers excellent matching of device properties over large areas, it suffers from a gate-bias-dependent threshold voltage shift in time, leading to grayscale inaccuracies. In order to counter this problem, many compensation circuits have been designed. The purpose of the compensation circuit is to estimate the threshold voltage shift in driver TFTs and apply a correction so as to maintain a constant brightness. However, all of the compensation circuits designed to date suffer from low spatial and temporal resolution and reliability issues or high cost due to the use of custom-made CMOS technology. In this paper, we focus on building AMOLED display systems solely based on a-Si:H TFT technology along with the use of off-the-shelf CMOS components to lower costs. Furthermore, we achieve high spatial and temporal resolution and high yield with the use of a two-TFT voltage programmed pixel circuit along with a statistical based external calibration circuit.