Postdoctoral Fellow Kyung Hee University Dongdaemun-Gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
A comparison between cyclic out-folding and in-folding strain on flexible poly-Si TFTs for foldable AMOLED display is reported. TFT under out-folding stress exhibits severe degradation including positive threshold voltage (VTh) shift with unstable drain current (ID) than in-folding, which is related to defect-generation at poly-Si grain-boundary and justified using TCAD simulation. Stable low leakage current ( <1 pA) after 30,000 mechanical folding cycles confirms the defect-formation within poly-Si and grain boundary protrusions. Electrical recovery using vacuum annealing after folding stress verifies the origin of electrical degradation as metastable traps generation.