Electronics on plastic foil, for applications in flexible OLED displays, sensor arrays and circuits

Thin-film transistors (TFT) on plastic substrates are finding their way to commercial products. We focus in this paper on organic and oxide TFTs, which are compatible with polyimide, but also with PEN (poly ethylene naphtalate) substrates. Their use in backplanes of voltage-controlled displays, such as electrophoretic displays, is demonstrated since many years. Very similar TFT technologies enable flexible and large-area imagers, in particular when combined with thin-film organic photodetectors. Current state-of-art performance figures of these flexible TFTs allow to anticipate their appearance in flexible OLED displays in the coming years. Finally, we also discuss their possible use in flexible integrated circuits: these include integrated line drivers for flexible displays, but also digital circuits for identification, to be integrated in flexible labels; and analog circuits, for instance for local amplification of sensor signals.