Flexible Microelectronics; High-Resolution Active-Matrix Electrophoretic Displays

A beautiful, flexible active-matrix electrophoretic display (AM-EPD) device is reported. The flexible AM-EPD device has a $40.0{\times}30.0\;mm^2$ display area, measures about 0.27 mm in thickness, weighs about 0.45 g and possesses only 20 external connections. The flexible AM-EPD device displays clear black-and-white images with 5 gray-scales on $160{\times}120$ pixels. The display is free from residual image problems, because we use an area-gray-scale method on $320{\times}240$ EPD elements, each of which is driven with binary signals. Each pixel consists of 4 EPD elements. In addition, since the response time of the electrophoretic material is as long as approximately 400 ms and since the display possesses a large number of EPD elements, we have developed a special driving method suitable for changing EPD images comfortably. A complete image is formed on the AM-EPD device, consisting of a reset frame and several, typically 6, image frames.