Amorphous Silicon Backplane with Polymer MEMS Structures for Electrophoretic Displays

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe development of electronic paper has been a long-term goal and electrophoretic displays are a promising candidate for this application. Apart from developing the electrophoretic display medium there are important issues to solve regarding the overall system. The importance of the electronic addressing method increases with the demand for arbitrary images or text. We have developed and tested active-matrix backplanes based on amorphous silicon technology, as well as the driver electronics. The electrophoretic ink is combined with the backplane employing polymer MEMS cell structures. This system allows us to display high-resolution images and it is a good test bed for investigating various parameters of the electrophoretic display medium and of the electronics.