Honeywell Develops New Materials for Flat Panel Displays

Honeywell Electronic Materials has developed new materials for the production of flat panel displays that can reduce their manufacturing costs and power consumption while improving color uniformity and device lifespan.

The materials were developed through a project announced last year with the United States Display Consortium (USDC), a public-private partnership chartered with developing the supply chain for the flat panel display industry, and in collaboration with the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University (ASU FDC), an industry-government-academic collaborative venture that works on displays and associated materials and manufacturing technology.

Honeywell's material enhances the amount of visible light that passes through the display while only absorbing less than 1 percent of the light.  In addition, Honeywell's material achieves smoothness, known as planarity, in excess of 90 percent.  As a result, the color uniformity of the display is improved.  Additionally, initial manufacturing results, supported by operational models, show cost of ownership decreased by 10 percent or greater.

The new materials are specifically focused on overcoming the challenges of planarization that are encountered in fabricating thin film transistors for flexible display applications.

Thin film transistors are a critical component of flat panel displays, which are commonly used in notebook and laptop computers.  Flat panel displays are comprised of an array of pixels which together create an image on the display.  Thin-film transistors act as switches to individually turn each pixel on or off.  Planarization is critical for creating the uniformly flat surfaces necessary during the production of these transistors.

The new materials address planarization in order to enable flexible displays to realize their promise of information displays that are ultra thin, lightweight, and intrinsically rugged.  The materials improve manufacturability in terms of both costs and yields, and the improved product performance results in a better viewing experience with the resulting display.  07-24-2007.

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