Rocket Fuel Speeds Transistors

Mick Ohrberg writes "The rocket fuel hydrazine has been proven to increase the speed of thin-film transistors, which are used in LCD displays. It's also much cheaper to produce these transistors in a new "wet" manufacturing technique, based on creating the thin layers by using the centrifugal force caused by spinning the substrate. The result? Well, if the manufacturing cost plummets, maybe that 42" LCD monitor for my PC will be within (financial) reach soon."

Comments

Re:Good news - refresh rates

[cruff]

Refresh rates are related to how fast the actual liquid crystal material can reorient itself in response to the applied voltage. So, unfortunately, unless they also use a new type of liquid crystal, the answer is probably not.

Hydrazine: Bad Stuff

[whorfin]

From the EPA and CDC. Perhaps Outsourcing LCD production is a good thing, after all?

Re:OLED influenced as well?

[TheClam]

Hydrazine doesn't play nicely with organics, and there's no tin sulphide in an OLED, so no.

Re:Hydrazine? Tin Disulfide?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

The hydrazine is only used while fabricating the LCD, it doesn't stay in it.
It's used as a solvent to put a layer of TnS2 on the substrate.

Re:OLED influenced as well?

[Komi]

Acording to this other article it seems like TFT benefitted from OLED techniques, rather than the reverse. OLED semiconductors are popular they can be disolved into a liquid. In that form, it's very easy and cheap to build the circuit. It's much more expensive to work with TFT semiconductors. Well now they've figured out how to disolve TFT semiconductors into a liquid. TFT semiconductors have much better electrical properties. So you get the performance of TFT at the cost of OLED.

I'm no expert on this, so go read online for more info.

Komi