What is a TFT:
A special kind of FET-made by deposition of thin films of diff. materials.
What is a FET:
A semiconductor device in which current is controllled by electric field. Consists of 3 regions: > Source > Drain > Gate > 2 types of FET:n channel,p channel.
Operation of FET
Source and Drain doped with charge carriers - provide excess holes (p-doped) or electrons (n-doped).
Body - between Source and Drain; is semiconductor that is either non-doped or oppositely doped from source and drain.
The gate is placed near the body region, but separated by an electrical insulator, (Often oxides).
In n-channel FET, applying positive voltage to (a negative voltage in the case of a hole-doped p-channel, or pnp, transistor) to the gate, the gate provides and electric field that causes electrons to be mobile in the body of the transistor, which becomes conductive and even current amplifying. This electric field affect coins the name FET.
The most prevalent current use of TFTs In Active Matrix LCD(AMLCD) The AMLCD uses TFTs to store the state of a cell temporarily with a capacitor- until the next refresh. For this use, the most important characteristics of the TFT are a low leakage current and a fast response time
AMLCD
The substrate most often used in the creation of a TFT is glass. Glass has a very low transmission of liquid water and water vapor
The creation of a top-gate staggered n-channel TFT, the next step will be the deposition by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Process.
The current method of making polymer films more water resistant is by depositing a barrier layer upon the component side of the film
The most widely used organic semiconductors, such as pentacene, thiophene oligomers, and polythiophene, reached maturity . DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OTFT&NORMAL SEMI CONDUCTORS: In silicon semiconductors, the atoms are connected with strong covalent bonds and charge carriers move as delocalized waves and thus have a high mobility. In organic semiconductors, carrier transport takes place by hopping between localized states.
CHALLENGES TO OVERCOME :
Low shrinkage from heating High enough processing temperature for semiconductor excitation Surface smoothness Solvent & moisture resistance Clarity.
The use of OLEDs as the luminescent component reduces the above effect.
Faster Software development (eg:games) Material development Colour Colour filter definition Image processing Pen input Handwriting recognition High durability.
To make high performance OLED, TFT driven, flexible displays production and discovery cost to be reduced.
[1] E.A. Al-Nuaimy and J.M. Marshall. Excimer laser crystallization and doping of source and drain regions in high quality amorphous silicon thin film transistors. Applied Physics Letters, 69(25):38573859, December 1996. [2] C.D. Dimitrakopoulos and D.J. Mascaro. Organic thin film transistors: A review of recent advances. IBM Journal of Research & Development, 45(1):1127, January 2001.
[3] Emmanuel P. Giannelis. Ubiquitous electronics: Why now?, March 2006. A presentation in the Cornell