5-3: Distinguished Paper: Power Saving through State Retention in IGZO-TFT AMOLED Displays for Wearable Applications

We present a qHD (960x540 with 3 sub-pixels) top-emitting AMOLED display with 340ppi resolution using a self-aligned (SA) IGZO TFT backplane on polyimide-foil with humidity barrier. The back plane process flow is based on a 7 layer photolithography process with a CD=4um. We implement a 2T1C pixel engine and use commercial source driver IC made for LTPS. By using IGZO TFT and leveraging the extremely low off-current, we can switch-off the power to the source and gate driver while maintaining the image un-changed for several minutes. We demonstrate that, depending on the image content, low-refresh operation yields reduction in power consumption of up to 50% compared to normal (continuous) operation. We show that with further increase in resolution, the power saving through state retention will be even more significant.