Apple Inc.

Hiroshi Osawa

Shih Chang Chang

Kyung-Wook Kim

Yu-Cheng Chen

Ming-Chin Hung

Yu Cheng Chen

Shih-Chang Chang

Shang-Chih Lin

Ting-Kuo Chang

Byung Duk Yang

Ming Xu

Chun-Yao Huang

Hirokazu Yamagata

Cheng-Ho Yu

Szu-Hsien Lee

Daisuke Nozu

John Z Zhong

Cheng Kai Chen

Zhibing Ge

Abbas Jamshidi Roudbari

Yuan Chen

Shin-Hung Yeh

Kyung Wook Kim

Young Cheol Yang

Abbas Jamshidi-Roudbari

Majid Gharghi

Keitaro Yamashita

Chia Hsuan Tai

Sang Un Choi

Ton-Yong Wang

An electronic device may include a display having an array of display pixels on a substrate. The display pixels may be organic light-emitting diode display pixels or display pixels in a liquid crystal display. In an organic light-emitting diode display, hybrid thin-film transistor structures may be formed that include semiconducting oxide thin-film transistors, silicon thin-film transistors, and capacitor structures. The capacitor structures may overlap the semiconducting oxide thin-film transistors. Organic light-emitting diode display pixels may have combinations of oxide and silicon transistors. In a liquid crystal display, display driver circuitry may include silicon thin-film transistor circuitry and display pixels may be based on oxide thin-film transistors. A single layer or two different layers of gate metal may be used in forming silicon transistor gates and oxide transistor gates. A silicon transistor may have a gate that overlaps a floating gate structure.

Displays with silicon and semiconducting oxide thin-film transistors

A display may have an array of pixels. The pixels may have color filter elements such as red, green, and blue color filter elements. A layer of opaque material may be used to form a black matrix. The black matrix may have openings that receive the color filter elements. A backlight unit may produce backlight illumination for the display. A reflector layer may be interposed between the black matrix and the backlight unit. The reflector layer may have openings aligned with the openings in the black matrix and the color filter elements and may overlap the black matrix. Some of the backlight from the backlight unit may pass through the color filter elements. Other backlight may by be recycled by being reflected off of the reflector layer, thereby enhancing backlight efficiency.

Display with backlight recycling structures

Improvement of visual uniformity of an integrated touch screen display is provided. A touch screen can include common electrodes separated by gaps in a Vcom layer. To improve visual non-uniformity in the display resulting from the gaps, a first set of semi-transparent dummy features (primary-dummy features) can be formed on a second layer at the locations of the gaps, and a second set of dummy features (supplementary-dummy features) can also be formed on the second layer or another layer to mitigate low spatial resolution of the primary-dummy features and/or non-uniform spacing of the primary-dummy features. In some examples, holes or slits can be formed in the Vcom layer at areas of the supplementary-dummy features to further improve visual uniformity.

Touch screen display uniformity

A display may have a thin-film transistor layer and a color filter layer. The display may include light blocking structures formed on a transparent substrate. In one arrangement, a clear planarization layer may be formed over the light blocking structures. The thin-film transistor layer may be formed over the planarization layer. The color filter layer may be integrated with the thin-film transistor layer. At least light blocking structures and the planarization layer should be formed from high temperature resistance material. In another arrangement, the color filter layer may be formed on the light blocking structures. A clear planarization layer may then be formed over the color filter layer. The thin-film transistor layer may be formed on the planarization layer. In this arrangement, the color filter layer also needs to be formed from thermal resistance material.

Displays with flipped panel structures

A display may have a color filter layer and a thin-film transistor layer. A layer of liquid crystal material may be located between the color filter layer and the thin-film transistor (TFT) layer. The TFT layer may include thin-film transistors formed on top of a glass substrate. A passivation layer may be formed on the thin-film transistor layers. An oxide liner may be formed on the passivation layer. A first low-k dielectric layer may be formed on the oxide liner. A second low-k dielectric layer may be formed on the first low-k dielectric layer. A common voltage electrode and associated storage capacitance may be formed on the second low-k dielectric layer. Thin-film transistor gate structures may be formed in the passivation layer. Conductive routing structures may be formed on the oxide liner, on the first low-k dielectric layer, and on the second low-k dielectric layer. The use of routing structures on the oxide liner reduces overall routing resistance and enables interlaced metal routing, which can help reduce the inactive border area outside the active display regions.

Display circuitry with reduced metal routing resistance

A display may have a color filter layer and a thin-film transistor layer. A liquid crystal layer may be located between the color filter layer and the thin-film transistor layer. The color filter layer may have an array of color filter elements on a transparent substrate. The array of color filter elements may include more than three colors. Colored photoimageable polymer layers may be combined to form some of the color filter elements. The color filter may have cyan, magenta, and yellow color filter elements each formed from a respective single layer of cyan, magenta, and yellow polymer and may have blue elements formed by overlapping cyan and magenta polymer, green elements formed by overlapping cyan and yellow polymer, and red elements formed by overlapping magenta and yellow polymer. Filters with white elements may also be provided.

Color filter structures for electronic devices with color displays

A display may have upper and lower display layers. A layer of liquid crystal material may be interposed between the upper and lower display layers. The display layers may have substrates. The display layers may include a color filter layer having an array of color filter elements on a glass substrate and a thin-film transistor layer having a layer of thin-film transistor circuitry on a glass substrate. Dielectric layers within the display layers such as dielectric layers within the thin-film transistor layer may have differing indices of refraction. Reflections and color shifts due to index of refraction discontinuities may be minimized by interposing graded index dielectric layers between adjacent layers with different indices. The graded index layers may be formed from structures with a continuously varying index of refraction or structures with a step-wise varying index of refraction.

Liquid crystal displays with minimized transmission loss and enhanced off-axis color fidelity

A display may have a thin-film transistor layer and color filter layer. The display may have an active area and an inactive border area. Light blocking structures in the inactive area may prevent stray backlight from a backlight light guide plate from leaking out of the display. The thin-film transistor layer may have a clear substrate, a patterned black masking layer on the clear substrate, a clear planarization layer on the black masking layer, and a layer of thin-film transistor circuitry on the clear planarization layer. The black masking layer may be formed from black photoimageable polyimide. The clear planarization layer may be formed from spin-on glass. The light blocking structures may include a first layer formed from a portion of the black masking layer and a second layer such as a layer of black tape on the underside of the color filter layer.

Border masking structures for liquid crystal display

A display may have a layer of liquid crystal material between a color filter layer and a thin-film transistor layer. Column spacer structures may be formed between the color filter layer and the thin-film transistor layer to maintain a desired separation between the color filter and thin-film transistor layers. Column spacers may be deposited in column spacer regions of the color filter layer. The color filter layer may include rows of red, green, and blue color filter elements. Blue color filter material that forms blue color filter elements in the color filter layer may also be used to form a planar surface over red and green color filter elements in the column spacer regions. Using the blue color filter material to planarize the surface on which column spacers are formed ensures that the column spacers provide sufficient support for the display without requiring an additional planarization layer.

Display with column spacer structures

Liquid crystal displays with oxide-based thin-film transistors

A display may have a color filter layer and a thin-film transistor layer. A layer of liquid crystal material may be located between the color filter layer and the thin-film transistor (TFT) layer. The TFT layer may include thin-film transistors formed on top of a glass substrate. A passivation layer may be formed on the thin-film transistor layers. A first low-k dielectric layer may be formed on the passivation layer. Data line routing structures may be formed on the first low-k dielectric layer. A second low-k dielectric layer may be formed on the first low-k dielectric layer. A common voltage electrode and associated storage capacitance may be formed on the second low-k dielectric layer. The first and second low-k dielectric layers may be formed from material having substantially similar refractive indices to maximize backlight transmittance and may have appropriate thicknesses so as to minimize parasitic capacitive loading.

Display circuitry with improved transmittance and reduced coupling capacitance

Display driver circuitry for liquid crystal displays with semiconducting-oxide thin-film transistors

Systems including and methods for forming a backplane for an electronic display are presented. The backplane includes interlaced crystallized regions, and the interlaced crystallized regions include at least a left column of crystallized regions and a right column of crystallized regions. The left and right columns include rows of crystallized regions with gaps disposed between each of the rows. Furthermore, each crystallized region in the left column extends into a corresponding gap in the right column, and each crystallized region in the right column extends into a corresponding gap in the left column.

Display having a backplane with interlaced laser crystallized regions

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Hiroshi Osawa