New Semiconductor Device Can Enhance Image Quality For Phones, PCs And TVs

A research team at UCLA has been successful in developing a new device and its manufacturing process that can bring about enhanced quality of images in the displays used in smartphones, printers, PCs, tablets and television sets. By producing new kind of semiconductors used to manufacture LCD and OLED displays, the team of researchers including Yang Yang, the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas Jr. Professor of Engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, they have significantly brought down the price of developing these devices. The new device is capable of scalin up production of thin-film transistors.

The TFTs or Thin-Film Transistors are the most important components of LCDs or OLEDs. They are responsible for controlling the brightness and color provided by each pixel. The efficiency of a transistor is measured by its electron mobility i.e. the ability to precisely adjust the voltage and current that turn pixels on and off. If it is high, the TFTs are able to adjust the screen's color and brightness more easily and with greater energy efficiency than the ones with lesser electron mobility. The morphous silicon-based TFTs in use today, suffer from the same problem.


The non-silicon–based amorphous oxide semiconductor TFT developed by the UCLA team offers about 10 to 20x more mobility than the current product. Composed using indium gallium zinc oxide and indium tin zinc oxide, the newly designed TFT also features a different processing technology. Unlike the current tech, which needs a large vacuum chamber and a costly coating procedure, the new process is as simple as applying a coat of paint to an object and then baking it in an oven. The researchers are confident that their device's performance is at par with that of commercial TFTs and can be produced at a much lower cost.

Source: University of California, Los Angeles