Apple Inc.

Supriya Goyal

Yuxi Zhao

Shih Chang Chang

Dinesh C Mathew

Paul Stephen Drzaic

Cheng Kai Chen

Hoon Sik Kim

Chaohao Wang

Zhibing Ge

Chun-Yao Huang

Christiaan A Ligtenberg

Jiaying Wu

Yuan Chen

Shih-Chyuan Fan Jiang

Hyungryul J Choi

Byung Duk Yang

Xiaowei Wu

Kwang Soon Park

Min Tao

Paul V Johnson

Kyung-Wook Kim

Wenyong Zhu

Bhadrinarayana Lalgudi Visweswaran

Yu-Cheng Chen

Terry C Lam

Chang-Chia Huang

Yasmin F Afsar

Christopher L Boitnott

Se Hyun Ahn

Yong Kwan Kim

Mohd Fadzli A Hassan

Hyunmin A Song

Kuan-Ying Lin

Cihan Yilmaz

Xinsheng Chu

Chan Hyuk Park

In devices with flexible displays, multilayer adhesive stacks may be included. A multilayer adhesive may attach a flexible display panel to the display cover layer in an electronic device. Including multiple layers of adhesive in the adhesive stack (as opposed to a single layer) provides more degrees of freedom for the tuning and optimization of the properties of the adhesive stack. The multilayer adhesive stack therefore has better performance than if only a single layer of adhesive is used. The multilayer adhesive stack may include one or more layers of soft adhesive, hard adhesive, hard elastomer, hard polymer, and/or glass to optimize the mechanical and optical performance of the multilayer adhesive stack. Soft adhesive layers may be included to optimize lateral decoupling (e.g., during folding and unfolding) of the adhesive stack. Harder layers may be included to provide rigidity and prevent denting during impact events.

Electronic devices with multilayer adhesive

A display may have display layers that form an array of pixels. An angle-of-view adjustment layer may overlap the display layers. The angle-of-view adjustment layer may include an array of adjustable light blocking structures formed from electrochromic material. The electrochromic material may be interposed between first and second electrode layers. When it is desired to operate the display in a private viewing mode, control circuitry may apply a current to the first and second electrodes that causes the electrochromic material to become more opaque, thereby restricting the angle of view of the display. When it is desired to operate the display in a public viewing mode, control circuitry may apply a current to the first and second electrodes that causes the electrochromic material to become more transparent, thereby opening up the angle of view of the display.

Displays with adjustable angles of view

An electronic device includes display layers such as liquid crystal display layers and a backlight unit that provides illumination for the display layers. The backlight unit includes light-emitting diodes that emit light into the edge of a light guide film. To minimize the inactive area of the display, the light-emitting diodes are tightly spaced to approximate a line light source instead of point light sources. Color and/or luminance compensation layers are incorporated at various locations within the backlight structures to ensure that the backlight provided to the display layers is homogenous. A thin-film transistor layer of the display is coupled to a printed circuit board by a flexible printed circuit. The flexible printed circuit has additional solder mask layers to improve robustness, encapsulation, and traces with a varying pitch.

Electronic device display with a backlight

A display may have a liquid crystal layer sandwiched between a thin-film transistor layer and a color filter layer. An upper polarizer may be placed on top of the thin-film transistor layer. A lower polarizer may be placed under the color filter layer. Components may be bonded to bond pads on the inner surface of the thin-film transistor layer using anisotropic conductive film. Bond quality may be assessed by probing probe pads that are coupled to the bond pads or by visually inspecting the bond pads through the thin-film transistor layer. Opaque masking material in the inactive area may be provided with openings to accommodate the bond pads. Additional opaque masking material may be placed on the underside of the upper polarizer and on the upper surface of the thin-film transistor layer to block the openings from view following visual inspection.

Display with low reflectivity alignment structures

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Supriya Goyal