Apple Inc.

Yuchi Che

Warren S Rieutort-Louis

Abbas Jamshidi Roudbari

Tsung-Ting Tsai

Ricardo A Peterson

Ting-Kuo Chang

Jean-Pierre Simon Guillou

Shyuan Yang

Jae Won Choi

Graeme M Williams

Shih Chang Chang

Yi Qiao

Bhadrinarayana Lalgudi Visweswaran

Kyounghwan Kim

Yue Cui

Chin-Wei Lin

Kingsuk Brahma

Hirokazu Yamagata

Tong Chen

Myung-Kwan Ryu

Mark T Winkler

Jiun-Jye Chang

Christopher Edward Glazowski

Ashray Vinayak Gogte

Cheng-Chih Hsieh

Tiffany T Moy

Ran Tu

Sebastian Knitter

Feng Wen

Mario Miscuglio

Keisuke Otsu

Jonathan H Beck

Seonpil Jang

Yun Yu Wang

Wei Hsin Yao

Peter F Holland

Vasudha Gupta

Chieh-Wei Chen

Jie Won Ryu

Yu Cheng Chen

Qing Li

Mahesh B Chappalli

Cheng-Ho Yu

Shengkui Gao

Shin-Hung Yeh

Chia-Hsiang Chen

Injae Hwang

Dong Zheng

Christophe Blondin

Ching-Sang Chuang

Jenny Hu

Yingying Tang

Chuang Qian

David S Hum

Wenrui Cai

Yue Jack Chu

Stephen S Poon

Chien-Ya Lee

Younggu Lee

Fan Gui

Doh-Hyoung Lee

ChoongHo Lee

Zhao Wang

Chaohao Wang

Mohammad Reza Esmaeili Rad

Sungki Lee

Salman Karbasi

Yurii Morozov

Xin Lin

Woo Shik Jung

Michael H Lim

Yang Xu

Salman Kabir

Bo-Ren Wang

Wen-I Hsieh

Ming Xu

Alexis G Soyseven

Hei Kam

Matthew Dominic Hollands

Matthew J Schwendeman

Levent Erdal Aygun

Ximeng Guan

Kenny Kim

Snehal T Jariwala

Aida Raquel Colon-Berrios

Yue Qu

Ming E Tai

Ing-Jye Wang

Jimmy H Huang

Timothy H Ellis

Clint M Perlaki

David R Manly

Hyun H Boo

Kevin J Choboter

Lu Yan

Na Zhu

Majid Esfandyarpour

Wenbing Hu

Zhizhen Ma

An electronic device may include a display and an optical sensor formed underneath the display. The display may have both a full pixel density region and a high-transmittance region that overlaps the optical sensor. To increase the transmittance of light through the high-transmittance region of the display, emissive sub-pixels in the high-transmittance region may be shorted together. Each emissive sub-pixel may be shorted to an emissive sub-pixel of the same color. The emissive sub-pixels in the high-transmittance region of the display may have the same layout but smaller sizes relative to the full pixel density region of the display. The thin-film transistor sub-pixels in the high-transmittance region may be consolidated horizontally and/or vertically to produce larger continuous high-transmittance areas.

Devices with displays having transparent openings and shorted pixels

A light emitter that operates through a display may cause display artifacts, even when the light emitter operates using non-visible wavelengths. Display artifacts caused by a light emitter that operates through a display may be referred to as emitter artifacts. To mitigate emitter artifacts, a display pixel that overlaps the light emitter may include a transistor that provides a current sink to divert leakage current away from the light-emitting diode in that pixel. A shielding layer may be interposed between the light emitter and a display pixel. The shielding layer may block light from the light emitter. The shielding layer may have an opening that exposes one transistor in the pixel to the light from the light emitter. Pixels that overlap the light emitter may have larger anodes than pixels that do not overlap the light emitter.

Display pixel with a current sink to mitigate artifacts caused by an under-display light emitter

In a display characterized by regions with different pixel responses due, for example, to local pixel density variation, voltage-to-luminance matching may be non-universal. Therefore, in order to avoid visual artifacts that may hinder a desired visualization of displayed content, it may be advantageous to compensate the different gamma responses. In some cases, such as with electronic devices having a single pixel density across the display, optical calibration may be performed to determine voltage-to-luminance matching. However, in electronic devices with local pixel density variations, it may be disadvantageous to perform optical calibrations for each region with a different pixel density. Instead of using two distinct gamma curves which may include dedicated optical calibration, a global nonlinear scaler (GNLS) compensation may be applied. Embodiments may pertain to techniques for applying a per-channel and band-global gamma-to-voltage compensation to reduce or minimize a relative luminance error amongst different responses of display regions.

Global nonlinear scaler for multiple pixel gamma response compensation

Touch electrode architecture techniques can be used to reduce or eliminate metal mesh within the one or more high-transmittance regions of a touch screen including one or more high-transmittance regions. In some examples, one or more optical devices can be integrated with a touch screen such that light associated with the one or more optical devices passes through one or more layers of the touch screen. In some such examples, to avoid degrading performance of the optical devices, one or more high-transmittance regions can be used. Additionally or alternatively, in some examples, the high-transmittance can be achieved using touch electrode architecture techniques that use transparent or semi-transparent materials instead of opaque metal mesh within the high-transmittance regions.

Touch electrode architecture for high-transmittance touch screen

An electronic device includes a display and a sensor underneath the display. The display has a full pixel density region and a reduced pixel density region. Compared to pixels in the full pixel density region, pixels in the reduced pixel density region can be controlled using overdriven power supply voltages, overdriven scan control signals, different initialization and reset voltages, and can include capacitors and transistors with different physical and electrical characteristics. Gate drivers provide scan signals to pixels in the full pixel density region, whereas overdrive buffers provide overdrive scan signals to pixels in the reduced pixel density region. The pixels in the full pixel density region and the pixels in the reduced pixel density region can be controlled using different black level or gamma settings for each color channel and can be adjusted physically to match luminance, color, as well as to mitigate differences in temperature and aging impact.

Displays having reduced pixel density region with localized tuning

An electronic device may include a display and a sensor under the display. The display may include an array of subpixels for displaying an image to a user of the electronic device. At least a portion of the array of subpixels may be selectively removed in a pixel removal region to improve optical transmittance to the sensor through the display. The pixel removal region may include a plurality of pixel free regions that are devoid of thin-film transistor structures, that are devoid of power supply lines, that have continuous open areas due to rerouted row/column lines, that are partially devoid of touch circuitry, that optionally include dummy contacts, and/or have selectively patterned display layers.

Methods and configurations for improving the performance of sensors under a display

An electronic device may include a display and an optical sensor formed underneath the display. The display may have both a full pixel density region and a pixel removal region with a plurality of high-transmittance areas that overlap the optical sensor. To mitigate reflectance mismatch between the full pixel density region and the pixel removal region, the pixel removal region may include a transition region at one or more edges. In the transition region, one or more components may have a gradual density change between the full pixel density region and a central portion of the pixel removal region. Components that may have a changing density in the transition region include dummy thin-film transistor sub-pixels, dummy anodes, a cathode layer, and a touch sensor metal layer. The transition region may also include anodes that gradually change shape and/or size.

Devices with displays having transparent openings and transition regions

A light emitter that operates through a display may cause display artifacts, even when the light emitter operates using non-visible wavelengths. To mitigate artifacts caused by a light emitter operating through a display, the display may have a higher density of thin-film transistor sub-pixels than emissive sub-pixels. This allows for a region in the display to include emissive sub-pixels but be free of thin-film transistor sub-pixels. The light emitter may operate through this region in the display. Additionally, to reduce the amount of space occupied in the inactive area of a display by gate driver circuitry, at least a portion of the gate driver circuitry may be positioned in the active area of the display. To accommodate the gate driver circuitry, emissive sub-pixels may be laterally shifted relative to corresponding thin-film transistor sub-pixels.

Display with a transmitter under an active area

A light emitter that operates through a display may cause display artifacts, even when the light emitter operates using non-visible wavelengths. Display artifacts caused by a light emitter that operates through a display may be referred to as emitter artifacts. To mitigate emitter artifacts, operating conditions for a display frame may be used to determine an optimal firing time for the light emitter during that display frame. The operating conditions used to determine the optimal firing time may include emitter operating conditions, display content statistics, display brightness, temperature, and refresh rate. Operating conditions from one or more previous frames may be stored in a frame buffer and may be used to help determine the optimal firing time for the light emitter during a display frame. Pixel values for the display may be modified to mitigate emitter artifacts.

Mitigating artifacts caused by an under-display light emitter

An electronic device may include a display and an optical sensor formed underneath the display. The electronic device may include a plurality of transparent windows that overlap the optical sensor. The resolution of the display panel may be reduced in some areas due to the presence of the transparent windows. To mitigate diffraction artifacts, a first sensor (-) may sense light through a first pixel removal region having transparent windows arranged according to a first pattern. A second sensor (-) may sense light through a second pixel removal region having transparent windows arranged according to a second pattern that is different than the first pattern. The first and second patterns of the transparent windows may result in the first and second sensors having different diffraction artifacts. Therefore, an image from the first sensor may be corrected for diffraction artifacts based on an image from the second sensor.

Displays having transparent openings

An electronic device display may have an active area with pixels. An optical sensor may be formed under a sensor region in the active area. During operation, ambient light and/or other light associated with the optical sensor may pass through the sensor region. To ensure that the light for the optical sensor can pass through the display, the display may have one or more layers with sensor openings such as a metal layer and a pressure sensitive adhesive layer that attaches the metal layer to the pixels of the display. To help minimize visibility of the openings in the sensor region, the pressure sensitive adhesive layer may be configured to have a reflectivity that matches the appearance of the display in the sensor region to surrounding areas. Undesired light output uniformity can be reduced by ensuring that the substrate material in the display has a low light absorption coefficient.

Electronic devices with through-display sensors

To reduce the amount of space occupied in the inactive area of a display by gate driver circuitry, at least a portion of the gate driver circuitry may be positioned in the active area of the display. To accommodate the gate driver circuitry, emissive sub-pixels may be laterally shifted relative to corresponding thin-film transistor sub-pixels. This allows for the thin-film transistor sub-pixels to be grouped adjacent to the central area of the active area, leaving room along an edge of the active area to accommodate one or more additional display components such as gate driver circuitry or fanout portions of data lines.

Displays with gate driver circuitry in an active area

An electronic device may include a display having display pixels formed in an active area of the display. The display further includes display driver circuitry for driving gate lines that are routed across the display. A hole such as a through hole, optical window, or other inactive region may be formed within the active area of the display. Multiple gate lines carrying the same signal may be merged together prior to being routed around the hole to help minimize the routing line congestion around the border of the hole. Dummy circuits may be coupled to the merged segment portion to help increase the parasitic loading on the merged segments. The hole may have a tapered shape to help maximize the size of the active area. The hole may have an asymmetric shape to accommodate multiple sub-display sensor components.

Reducing border width around a hole in display active area

An electronic device may have a display with an active area configured to display images and an inactive area that is free of pixels and that does not display images. Touch sensor sense lines may have portions located in the active area and portions located in the inactive area. The active and inactive areas may be characterized by respective reflectivity values. To match the reflectivities of the active and inactive areas and thereby avoid undesired visually distinguishable differences in the appearances of these areas, the touch sensor circuitry in the inactive areas may be configured to match the reflectivity values of the active and inactive areas. Sense line portions in the inactive area may have metal traces of enhanced reflectivity and/or uneven surface topology to enhance ambient light reflections through a circular polarizer that overlaps the active and inactive areas.

Electronic device displays with visibly matched borders

A display may have both a full pixel density region and a pixel removal region with a plurality of high-transmittance areas that overlap an optical sensor. Each high-transmittance area may be devoid of thin-film transistors and other display components. To improve transmission while maintaining satisfactory touch sensing performance, one or more segments of the touch sensor metal in the pixel removal region may have a reduced width relative to the touch sensor metal in the full pixel density region and/or one or more segments of the touch sensor metal in the pixel removal region may be omitted relative to the touch sensor metal in the full pixel density region. To mitigate a different appearance between the pixel removal region and the full pixel density region at off-axis viewing angles, the position of the touch sensor metal in the pixel removal region may be tuned.

Devices with displays having transparent openings and touch sensor metal

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Yuchi Che