Many portable consumer electronics, such as mobile phones, have small display windows for use in their operation. Many of the displays use liquid crystal technology or semiconductor-based light emitting diodes (LEDs) and are capable of only monochrome images. Low cost methods to produce low power consuming displays would find many applications, especially if full color was possible. One key advance in the area of display technology uses light-emitting polymers, currently in pilot-line development stages in several companies. This project will develop a new fabrication process for these light-emitting polymers that will make possible full color displays. This will be accomplished through the use of ink-jet printing for applying and patterning this polymer. Phase I will consist of three main parts: the development of the hardware required to print the polymers with a high degree of uniformity; the development of polymer solutions with characteristics suitable for ink-jet printing; and the combination of these results to fabricate fully-functional, multi-color displays. These will enable the development of full-color displays in Phase II.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The annual sales of cellular telephones are in excess of $1 billion and growing rapidly. Cell-phone manufacturers are greatly interested the use of polymer displays in next-generation phones. The trend in the industry is for higher information capacity displays and for the development of compact, emissive, multi-color and full-color displays.
