Apple Inc.

Keitaro Yamashita

Ting-Kuo Chang

Abbas Jamshidi Roudbari

Warren S Rieutort-Louis

Shin-Hung Yeh

Tsung-Ting Tsai

Shih-Chang Chang

Cheng-Ho Yu

Majid Gharghi

Ki Yeol Byun

Yun Yu Wang

Yu Cheng Chen

Shih Chang Chang

Chin-Wei Lin

Hopil Bae

Hyunwoo Nho

Kingsuk Brahma

Shinya Ono

Hirokazu Yamagata

Abbas Jamshidi-Roudbari

Hiroshi Osawa

Shang-Chih Lin

Kasra Omid-Zohoor

Sarath Chandrasekhar Venkatesh Kumar

An electronic device may include a display such as a light-emitting diode display. The electronic device may be a head-mounted device that provides a virtual reality or augmented reality environment to a user. To reduce artifacts in the display, a display may be operable in both a normal scanning mode and a partial scanning mode. In the normal scanning mode, every row of the display may be enabled to emit light in each frame. In the partial scanning mode, only a subset of the rows of the display may be enabled to emit light in each frame. The display may have a higher refresh rate in the partial scanning mode than in the normal scanning mode. To ensure uniform transistor stress across the display, the scanning driver for the display may scan the disabled rows in the partial scanning mode even though the rows will not be used to emit light.

Displays with multiple scanning modes

Electronic devices, storage medium containing instructions, and methods pertain to cancelling noise that results from application of voltages on gates of transistors in a display. One or more compensation or dummy drivers are used to apply a compensation voltage that is an inversion of voltages applied on the gates of the transistors.

Noise cancellation

An organic light-emitting diode display may contain an array of display pixels. Each display pixel may have a respective organic light-emitting diode that is controlled by a drive transistor. At low temperatures, it may be necessary to increase the amount of current through an organic light-emitting diode to achieve a desired luminance level. In order to increase the current through the light-emitting diode, the ground voltage level may be lowered. However, this may lead to thin-film transistors within the pixel leaking, which may result in undesirable display artifacts such as bright dots being displayed in a dark image. In order to prevent leakage in the transistors, the transistors may be coupled to separate reference voltage supplies or separate control lines. Additionally, the transistors may be positioned to minimize leakage even at low ground voltage levels.

Light-emitting diode display with reduced leakage

Methods and devices useful in discharging an aberrant charge on the VCOM of an electronic display and harvesting energy from the VCOM of the electronic display are provided. By way of example, a method may include supplying an activation signal to an active switching device of an electronic display. The active switching device is configured to discharge an aberrant charge on a common electrode of the electronic display. The method further includes discharging the aberrant charge by way of the active switching device. Discharging the aberrant charge comprises preventing a possible occurrence of image artifacts from becoming apparent on the electronic display.

Devices and methods for discharging or harvesting VCOM charge in electronic displays

An electronic device may include a display such as a light-emitting diode display. The electronic device may be a head-mounted device that provides a virtual reality or augmented reality environment to a user. To reduce artifacts in the display, a display may be operable in both a normal scanning mode and a partial scanning mode. In the normal scanning mode, every row of the display may be scanned in each frame. In the partial scanning mode, only a subset of the rows of the display may be scanned in each frame. The display may have a higher refresh rate in the partial scanning mode than in the normal scanning mode. The gate driver circuitry may include a shift register that includes a plurality of register circuits. At least one register circuit may have a first input and a second input that is different than the first input.

Thin-film transistor circuitry for a display may include conductive layers such as transparent conductive layers and metal layers and may include dielectric layers. The dielectric layers may include buffer layers, interlayer dielectric, gate insulator, and organic planarization layers. The organic planarization layers may be patterned photolithographically to form vias, trenches, and other structures. Trenches may be formed by removing the planarization layer in a strip. When planarization material is removed for forming a trench or other structure, a step is formed in the planarization material. Metal lines such as data lines and other signal lines may cross steps in the planarization material. To prevent shorts between lines, a step may have protrusions that help eliminate metal etch residue. Vias may be reduced in depth by forming metal bumps and dielectric bumps under the vias and by forming other via structures.

Display with shallow contact holes and reduced metal residue at planarization layer steps

A touch screen display may include gate line driver circuitry coupled to a display pixel array. The gate driver circuitry may include gate drivers connected in a chain. A given one of the gate drivers may include a set-reset latch. The set-reset latch may have a set input and a reset input. A logic gating circuit such as a logic NOR gate may have an output directly connected to the set input. The NOR gate may have a first input coupled to an output of a preceding gate driver in the chain and a second input coupled to an output of a succeeding gate driver. The reset input may be coupled to the output of the preceding gate driver. Gate line output signals may be simultaneously asserted for each of the drivers without generating unstable scenarios where logic high signals are provided to the set and reset inputs.

Displays with gate driver circuitry for discharging display pixels

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

Methods and devices useful in discharging an aberrant charge on a touch sensitive display of an electronic device are provided. By way of example, a an electronic device includes a power management and control circuitry configured to receive a first voltage signal and a second voltage signal from a display subsystem of a display of the electronic device, receive a third voltage signal from a touch subsystem of the display, provide a power signal to the display subsystem to activate the display subsystem when the display is determined to be in a temporarily inactive state. Providing the power signal to the display subsystem comprises discharging an aberrant charge based on the third voltage signal.

Devices and methods for preventing image artifacts on touch sensitive electronic displays

A touch screen display may include gate line driver circuitry coupled to a display pixel array. The display may be provided with intra-frame pausing (IFP) capabilities, where touch or other operations may be performed during one or more intra-frame blanking intervals. In one suitable arrangement, a gate driver circuit may include multiple gate line driver segments each of which is activated by a separate gate start pulse is that received through a demultiplexing circuit. In another suitable embodiment, the gate driver circuit may include analog or digital gate driver units that include control circuits for selectively (dis)charging internal nodes in the gate driver circuit so as to balance the amount of stress that is experienced by a drive transistor in gate driver units at or near an IFP row and the amount of stress that is experienced by the remaining gate driver units.

Display driver circuitry with balanced stress

A touch screen display may include gate line driver circuitry coupled to a display pixel array. The display may be provided with intra-frame pausing (IFP) capabilities, where touch or other operations may be performed during one or more intra-frame blanking intervals. In one suitable arrangement, a gate driver may be operable in a high impedance mode, where the output of the gate driver is left floating during touch or IFP intervals. In another suitable arrangement, the gate driver may be operable in an IFP reduced stress mode, where a digital pass gate in the gate driver is deactivated during IFP intervals. In yet another suitable arrangement, the gate driver may be operable in an all-gate-high (AGH) power-down mode, where the output of each gate driver in the driver circuitry is driven high in parallel when the displayed is being powered off. These arrangements may be implemented in any suitable combination.

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Nishinomiya, Japan

Keitaro Yamashita