TECHNOLOGY
The display industry drives the roadmap for thin film integrated circuit manufacturing technologies. As in diffusion semiconductor devices, advances in thin film electronic device performance have focused on the evolution from silicon to compound semiconductor materials in the pursuit of increased thin film device performance. And, as in diffusion devices, the move to compound semiconductors introduced new challenges in areas of performance and manufacturability.
Today, those challenges manifest in the two advances in thin film semiconductor materials:
• re-crystallized silicon (Low Temperature Polysilicon, or LTPS) and
• compound metal oxides (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide, or IGZO).
While LTPS technology enables a high-performance thin film transistor, it increases manufacturing complexity by 3-5 times over silicon. While IGZO eliminates much of the complexity of LTPS, IGZO’s interactions with silicon-based insulator materials leaves achieving promised improvements in TFT performance largely unrealized after a decade of device research, development and mass production.
This is where Amorphyx comes in. Instead of focusing on material science-oriented improvements to the semiconductor, our Amorphous Metal TFT (AMeTFT) technologies rework TFT gate materials to improve TFT performance by maximizing the use of IGZO’s total carrier density, using existing TFT structures and semiconductors. And our Amorphous Metal Nonlinear Resistor (AMNR) and Amorphous Metal Hot Electron Transistor (AMHET) technologies eliminate semiconductor materials by enabling for the first time the mass production of quantum tunneling conduction thin film electronics.
We currently offer five patented solutions - devices and display pixel circuits - for thin film integrated circuits. In all cases, we use thin, flexible amorphous metal coupled with a thin high-dielectric oxide insulator. In TFTs, this gate materials set increases transconductance - and thus mobility - in combination with silicon and metal oxide semiconductors. The materials set also supports tunneling electrons across the insulator - leveraging quantum techniques to eliminate semiconductor materials. All our technologies are optimized for currently installed thin film integrated circuit mass production equipment and processes.
device and circuit technologies
Amorphyx has developed the AMeTFT based on a thin, flexible amorphous gate metal and a high-dielectric oxide gate insulator that raise the mobility of best-in-class IGZO TFTs by 3-6x. Available in implementations for silicon and metal oxide semiconductors. Simple process to integrate into existing LCD, AMOLED and microLED backplane manufacturing equipment.
AMeTFT: TV and Mobile
IGZO 2T1C: 0.1-240Hz Image Refresh Rate for Small-to-Large-Area Displays
The 2T1C circuit is a high-performance replacement for the LTPO pixel circuit. Its dramatically less complex manufacturing process combines with the superior leakage current and mobility performance of AMeTFT in allowing high and low image refresh rate AMOLED support for reduced power consumption and premium-grade image quality for flagship mobile devices, gaming monitors and TVs.
Amorphyx’s AMNR (Amorphous Metal Non-Linear Resistor) is a quantum tunneling replacement for silicon and metal oxide semiconductor TFTs with very fast switching speed and very low leakage current . A key component of our more sophisticated circuit offerings.
AMNR: High Speed and Low Power Applications
211: The Ultimate in Image Refresh Rate and Power Consumption Savings for Mobile Devices
The 211 display pixel circuit replaces the industry-standard 2T1C AMOLED and microLED pixel circuit. 211 takes two forms: an IGZO AMeTFT switching TFT paired with the customer’s existing LTPS drive TFTl; and AMNR replacement for the switching transistor for lower power and leakage currents, with our IGZO AMeTFT replacement for the LTPS drive transistor.
AMHET are unipolar minority carrier transistors, where the minority carrier is hot electrons and the majority carrier is cold electrons. Cold electrons are those with energy equal to the Fermi level of the base metal, and hot electrons are those with energy above this. The hot electrons are generated by tunneling across the high-K dielectric and their flow to the collector electrode is regulated by the collector-base barrier and electric field
AMHET
