Personnel

FICs - Prof. Philip K. T. Mok and Prof. Johnny K. O. Sin

Description

Active-matrix LCD (AMLCD) have become very popular among recently developed flat panel displays. However, matrix addressing of AMLCD involves a large number of interconnections between the display and the external driving circuits. Currently, researchers in this area propose to integrate the driver circuits directly on the display using thin-film transistor (TFT) processing. However, as the electrical characteristics of the TFT are poor compared with single crystal silicon devices, high performance analog circuits cannot be implemented. As a result, only digital driver circuits using several bits of data lines to represent different gray scale level of each pixel column can be placed directly on the display. This will significantly increase the number of connections between the interface circuit and the display panel. In addition, the gray-scale level of the display panel will be limited 6- to 8- bit resolution. Recently, a low temperature polysilicon TFT technology has been developed with very good electrical characteristics. It allows us to build high performance analog CMOS circuits on glass. In this project, we will use this advanced technology to design a novel analog display driver circuit which can significantly reduce the number of data lines connected to the display panel and provide a full gray scale or true color display panel. Other issues such as the reliability of the analog display driver under process and temperature variation will also be investigated.

Source: RGC | ITF