This is a National Phase Application filed under 35 U.S.C. 371 as a national stage of PCT/CN2019/097284, filed on Jul. 23, 2019, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
The present disclosure relates to the field of display technologies, and in particular, to an OLED pixel circuit, a driving method, and a display device.
Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have been widely used as light-emitting elements of display devices, which are referred to as OLED display devices, due to the OLEDs' advantages of self-luminescence, small size, light weight, low power consumption, and the like. Depending on an addressing scheme for pixels of each of the OLED display devices, the OLED display devices may be classified as an active matrix OLED (AMOLED) display device and a passive matrix OLED (PMOLED) display device. The AMOLED display device has the characteristics of fast response speed, high contrast, wide viewing angle, and the like, and thus is widely adopted.
Embodiments of the present disclosure provide an OLED pixel compensation circuit, a driving method thereof, and a display device.
An aspect of the present disclosure provides an OLED pixel compensation circuit, which includes an input sub-circuit, a compensation sub-circuit, a driving sub-circuit, a light-emitting sub-circuit, a data line, a scan line, and a light-emitting control line, wherein
In an embodiment, the OLED pixel compensation circuit further includes a reference voltage line, wherein
In an embodiment, the input sub-circuit includes a first transistor and a second transistor;
In an embodiment, the compensation sub-circuit includes a third transistor, a fourth transistor and a storage capacitor;
In an embodiment, the driving sub-circuit includes a driving transistor, which has a first electrode coupled to a positive power supply, a second electrode coupled to the first electrode of the fourth transistor, and a gate electrode coupled to the second electrode of the first transistor and the first electrode of the third transistor.
In an embodiment, the driving transistor is an N-type transistor, and the first electrode of the driving transistor is a drain electrode of the N-type transistor.
In an embodiment, the light-emitting sub-circuit includes an organic light-emitting diode, and an anode of the organic light-emitting diode is coupled to the second electrode of the fourth transistor.
Another aspect of the present disclosure provides a display device, which includes the OLED pixel compensation circuit according to any one of the foregoing embodiments of the present disclosure.
Still another aspect of the present disclosure provides a driving method of an OLED pixel compensation circuit, wherein the OLED pixel compensation circuit is the OLED pixel compensation circuit according to any one of the foregoing embodiments of the present disclosure, each of the first, second, third and fourth transistors is an N-type transistor, and the driving method includes:
To make one of ordinary skill in the art to better understand technical solutions of the present disclosure, an OLED pixel compensation circuit, a driving method thereof, and a display device of the present disclosure will be described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and exemplary embodiments.
An OLED display device may include a plurality of pixels and a plurality of OLED pixel circuits in one-to-one correspondence with the plurality of pixels. As shown in
The operating principle of the OLED pixel circuit shown in
In general, low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) is adopted to form the transistors in the OLED pixel circuits. The inventors of the present inventive concept have found that, since the current LTPS process employs a laser annealing technique, there is a large difference in threshold voltages Vth of transistors formed under a same condition. In a low gray scale picture, non-uniformity of the LTPS AMOLED pixel circuit of the 2T1C structure in a small range in a same direction may reach 30% to 40%, even a difference between adjacent transistors may reach 20%. In addition, the positive power line ELVDD supplies a voltage VDD to OLED pixel circuits in a same column, and in a case where the positive power line ELVDD is long (i.e., in a case of a large-sized display panel or display device), a large IR drop may occur on the positive power line ELVDD, such that a voltage received by a subsequent OLED pixel circuit is lower than a voltage received by a previous OLED pixel circuit, resulting in non-uniform display grays of the OLED display device. Therefore, a display device including the OLED pixel circuit has poor display effects. For example, in a low gray scale image, the non-uniformity in brightness caused by the IR drop of 1.0V in a same OLED pixel circuit with the 2T1C structure may reach 70% or more. Therefore, it is desirable to compensate, for example, the difference in a threshold voltage Vth of the driving transistors and the IR drop on the positive power line ELVDD to mitigate or eliminate the problem of the non-uniform display gray scales of the OLED display device due to the difference in the threshold voltage Vth of the driving transistors and the IR drop on the positive power line ELVDD.
Embodiments of the present disclosure provide an OLED pixel compensation circuit, as shown in
The OLED pixel compensation circuit can not only compensate the non-uniformity of the threshold voltages Vth of the driving sub-circuits, but also eliminate the influence of the IR drop of a power supply on the display uniformity of the display device including the OLED pixel compensation circuit, thereby improving the display effect of the display device.
In an embodiment, the OLED pixel compensation circuit may further include a data line Data and a scan line Scan (an example of which is a scan line Scan(n) of the N-th OLED pixel compensation circuit as shown in
In an embodiment, the OLED pixel compensation circuit may further include a reference voltage line (i.e., the line shown in
In an embodiment, the OLED pixel compensation circuit may further include a light-emitting control line EM (an example of which is a light-emitting control line EM(n) of the N-th OLED pixel compensation circuit is shown in
The OLED pixel compensation circuit is an OLED pixel circuit capable of compensating the difference in threshold voltage Vth of the driving sub-circuits SC3 (i.e., eliminating the defect of non-uniform gray scales of display caused by the difference in threshold voltage Vth of the driving sub-circuits SC3).
As an example,
In an embodiment, the input sub-circuit SC1 may include a first transistor T1 and a second transistor T2. The first transistor T1 has a first electrode coupled to the reference voltage line, a second electrode coupled to the compensation sub-circuit SC2, and a gate electrode coupled to the scan line Scan. The second transistor T2 has a first electrode coupled to the data line Data, a second electrode coupled to the compensation sub-circuit SC2, and a gate electrode coupled to the scan line Scan.
In an embodiment, the compensation sub-circuit SC2 may include a third transistor T3, a fourth transistor T4, and a storage capacitor C1. The third transistor T3 has a first electrode coupled to the second electrode of the first transistor T1 (i.e., coupled to a node Na), a second electrode coupled to the second electrode of the second transistor T2 (i.e., coupled to a node Nb), and a gate electrode coupled to the light-emitting control line EM. The fourth transistor T4 has a first electrode coupled to the driving sub-circuit SC3, a second electrode coupled to the light-emitting sub-circuit SC4 (i.e., to a node Nanode), and a gate electrode coupled to the light-emitting control line EM. The storage capacitor C1 has a first terminal coupled to the second electrode of the second transistor T2 and the second electrode of the third transistor T3 (i.e., coupled to the node Nb), and a second terminal coupled to the first electrode of the fourth transistor T4 (i.e., coupled to a node Nc).
In an embodiment, the driving sub-circuit SC3 may include a driving transistor TD. The driving transistor TD has a first electrode coupled to the positive power supply ELVDD, a second electrode coupled to the first electrode of the fourth transistor T4 (i.e., coupled to the node Nc), and a gate electrode coupled to the second electrode of the first transistor T1 and the first electrode of the third transistor T3 (i.e., coupled to the node Na).
In an embodiment, the driving transistor is an N-type transistor. The first electrode of the driving transistor is a drain electrode DRAIN of the N-type transistor, and the second electrode of the driving transistor is a source electrode SOURCE of the N-type transistor. A gate electrode GATE of the driving transistor TD is coupled to the second electrode of the first transistor T1 and the first electrode of the third transistor T3 (i.e., coupled to the node Na).
In an embodiment, the light-emitting sub-circuit SC4 may include an organic light-emitting diode EL. The organic light-emitting diode EL has an anode coupled to the second electrode of the fourth transistor T4, and a cathode coupled to the negative power supply ELVSS.
In an embodiment, the positive power supply ELVDD may provide a positive voltage, and the negative power supply ELVSS may provide a negative voltage. The voltage Vdata of the data signal may be a positive voltage, the reference voltage Vref may be a positive voltage, and Vref<Vdata.
It should be understood that in the present disclosure, the turn-on level refers to a level at which the associated transistor is turned on. For example, in the case of an N-type transistor, the turn-on level is a high level, and in the case of a P-type transistor, the turn-on level is a low level. In addition, a voltage of the positive power supply ELVDD may be higher than a voltage of the negative power supply ELVSS, such that the light-emitting sub-circuit SC4 (e.g., the organic light-emitting diode EL) may operate normally. The first transistor T1, the second transistor T2, the third transistor T3, and the fourth transistor T4 may all be N-type transistors, may all be P-type transistors, or may be a combination of N-type transistors and P-type transistors.
Next, the operation principle of the OLED pixel compensation circuit shown in
Referring to
For example, in the data input stage T1, the scan line Scan(n) is at a high level, and the light-emitting control line EM(n) is at a low level, such that the first transistor T1 and the second transistor T2 are turned on, and the third transistor T3 and the fourth transistor T4 are turned off. At this time, a potential of the node Na is Vref, and a potential of the node Nb is Vdata. Since the voltage Vgs between the gate electrode and the source electrode of the driving transistor TD is Vgs=Vref−Vanode (where the voltage Vanode is a voltage of the anode of the organic light-emitting diode EL in a light-emitting period of a previous frame), the voltage Vref is set such that Vgs=Vref−Vanode>Vth, the driving transistor TD is turned on. In this case, a potential of the node Nc is charged continuously to Vref-Vth such that the driving transistor TD is turned off. At this time, the data input stage ends.
For example, in the compensation and light-emitting stage t2, the scan line Scan(n) is at a low level, and the light-emitting control line EM(n) is at a high level, such that the first transistor T1 and the second transistor T2 are turned off, while the third transistor T3 and the fourth transistor T4 are turned on. Since a voltage difference across the storage capacitor C1 cannot undergo a sudden change, at this time, the potential of the node Nc becomes the voltage Vanode of the anode of the organic light-emitting diode EL, and the potential of the node Nb is Vdata−Vref+Vth+Vanode. Since the third transistor T3 is turned on, the potential of the node Na is equal to the potential Vdata−Vref+Vth+Vanode of the node Nb. In this case, since the voltage Vgs between the gate electrode and the source electrode of the driving transistor TD is Vgs=Vdata−Vref+Vth+Vanode−Vanode=Vdata−Vref+Vth>Vth, the driving transistor TD is turned on, and the voltage supplied from the positive power supply ELVDD is transmitted to the organic light-emitting diode EL through the driving transistor TD, thereby driving the organic light-emitting diode EL to emit light.
The data input stage t1 and the compensation and light-emitting stage t2 described above may occur repeatedly.
A current flowing through the driving transistor TD (i.e., the current flowing through the organic light-emitting diode EL) is determined by the following formula (1).
As described above, since Vgs=Vdata−Vref+Vth, the following formula (2) may be derived:
As can be seen from the above formula (2), since the reference voltage Vref is merely a reference power plane and does not generate a current through the organic light-emitting diode EL, a problem regarding the IR drop is not resulted from the reference voltage Vref. In addition, the threshold voltage Vth of the driving transistor TD is absent from the above formula (2), and thus a drift (or variation) of the threshold voltage Vth of the driving transistor TD has no influence on the current Ioled flowing through the organic light-emitting diode EL, thereby solving the problem of non-uniformity in the display gray scales of the OLED display device caused by a difference in threshold voltage Vth of the driving transistor and an IR drop on the positive power line ELVDD.
As described above, the OLED pixel compensation circuit may not only compensate the non-uniform display gray scales influenced by the non-uniformity of the threshold voltage Vth of the driving transistor, but also eliminate the influence of the IR drop of the power supply on the display gray scales, thereby improving the display effect of the OLED display device. In addition, the OLED pixel compensation circuit has a simple structure and simple driving timing.
Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a display device (e.g., an OLED display device), which includes the OLED pixel compensation circuit according to the embodiment shown in
Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a driving method of an OLED pixel compensation circuit, as shown in
In the data input stage t1, a high level is input through the scan line Scan(n), and a low level is input through the light-emitting control line EM(n).
In the compensation and light-emitting stage t2, a low level is input through the scan line Scan(n), and a high level is input through the light-emitting control line EM(n).
In an embodiment, the first transistor T1, the second transistor T2, the third transistor T3, the fourth transistor T4, and the driving transistor TD may have substantially the same parameters. Further, the high level and the low level may be levels at which each of the first transistor T1, the second transistor T2, the third transistor T3, and the fourth transistor T4 may be turned on and off, respectively.
For further steps and details of the driving method, reference may be made to the foregoing description.
The foregoing embodiments of the present disclosure may be combined with each other in a case of no explicit conflict.
It should be understood that the above embodiments are merely exemplary embodiments for explaining the principles of the present disclosure, and the present disclosure is not limited thereto. It will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art that various changes and modifications may be made therein without departing from the spirit and essence of the present disclosure, and these changes and modifications are to be considered as falling within the scope of the present disclosure.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/CN2019/097284 | 7/23/2019 | WO |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
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WO2021/012182 | 1/28/2021 | WO | A |
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Entry |
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China Patent Office, First Office Action (OA1) issued on Nov. 26, 2020 and the English translation for CN201980001117.2. |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20230103680 A1 | Apr 2023 | US |