Design Method of Equivalent Driving Waveform Based on Electrowetting Response Characteristics

Abstract

As a new reflective display technology, electrowetting displays (EWDs) have many important characteristics, such as high reflectivity, low power consumption, and paper-like display. However, the contact angle hysteresis, which is the inconsistency between the advancing contact angle and the receding contact angle of oil droplet movement, seriously affects the response speed of EWDs in the driving process. According to the hysteresis phenomenon of contact angle in an oil switch motion with the action of interface tension, the brightness curve of EWDs in the process of pixel switching by different driving voltages was tested in this paper, and driving voltage was changed from 30 to 100 V at the same time. Then, in order to reduce the influence of the hysteresis effect, an equivalent driving waveform design method with overdriving voltage was proposed, and the overvoltage was set to 100 V according to the hysteresis effect and driving characteristic of EWDs. Experimental results showed that the response rising time of EWDs was reduced to 21 ms by using the proposed driving waveform, and the response performance of EWDs can be effectively improved.