The present invention pertains to improved flat panel displays and methods of making and testing the displays. More particularly, the present invention is directed to methods of increasing the manufacturing yields of flat panel display backplanes and the displays made therefrom.
In recent years there has been growing interest in flat panel displays, such as those which employ liquid crystals, electrochromic or electroluminescence, as replacements for conventional cathode ray tubes (CRT). The flat panel displays promise lighter weight, less bulk and substantially lower power consumption than CRT's. Also, as a consequence of their mode of operation, CRT's nearly always suffer from some distortion. The CRT functions by projecting an electron beam onto a phosphor-coated screen. The beam will cause the spot on which it is focused to glow with an intensity proportional to the intensity of the beam. The display is created by the constantly moving beam causing different spots on the screen to glow with different intensities. Because the electron beam travels a further distance from its stationary source to the edge of the screen than it does to the middle, the beam strikes various points on the screen at different angles with resulting variation in spot size and shape (i.e. distortion).
Flat panel displays are manufactured to be substantially free of such distortion. In the manufacture of flat panel displays the circuit elements are deposited and patterned, generally by photolithography, on a substrate, such as glass. The elements are deposited and etched in stages to build a device having a matrix of perpendicular rows and columns of circuit control lines with a pixel contact and control element between the control line rows and columns. The pixel contact has a medium thereon which is a substance that either glows (active) or changes its response to ambient light (passive) when a threshold voltage is applied across the medium control element. The medium can be a liquid crystal, electroluminescent or electrochromic materials such as zinc sulfide, a gas plasma of, for example, neon and argon, a dichloroic dye, or such other appropriate material or device as will luminesce or otherwise change optical properties in response to the application of voltage thereto. Light is generated or other optical changes occur in the medium in response to the proper voltage applied thereto. Each optically active medium is generally referred to as a picture element or "pixel".
The circuitry for a flat panel display is generally designed such that the flat panel timeshares, or multiplexes, digital circuits to feed signals to one row and column control line of the pixels at a time. Generally one driving circuit is used for each row or column control line. In this way a subthreshold voltage can be fed to an entire row containing hundreds of thousands of pixels, keeping them all dark or inactive. Then a small additional voltage can be supplied selectively to particular columns to cause selected pixels to light up or change optical properties. The pixels can be made to glow brighter by applying a larger voltage or current of a longer pulse of voltage or current. Utilizing liquid crystal displays (LCD's) with twisted nematic active material, the display is substantially transparent when not activated and becomes light absorbing when activated. Thus, the image is created on the display by sequentially activating the pixels, row by row, across the display. The geometric distortion described above with respect to CRT's is not a factor in flat panel displays since each pixel sees essentially the same voltage or current.
One of the major problems that arises with respect to the prior art method of manufacture of backplanes for active matrix displays (e.g. those employing thin film transistors at each pixel) is that they generally suffer production yield problems similar to those of integrated circuits. That is, the yields of backplanes produced are generally not 100% and the yield (percentage of backplanes with no defects) can be 0% in a worst case. High quality displays will not tolerate any defective pixel transistors or other components. Also, larger size displays are generally more desirable than smaller size displays. Thus, a manufacturer is faced with the dilemma of preferring to manufacture larger displays, but having to discard the entire product if even one pixel is defective. In other words, the manufacturer suffers a radically increased manufacturing cost per unit resulting from decreasing usable product yield.
These problems of increased cost and decreased yield are dramatically improved in the present invention by providing methods of manufacturing display backplanes and the resulting displays with a greatly reduced number of fatal defects.