Flexible CMOS for portable screens

Electronics Weekly reports development by the University of Texas of a flexible version of today's standard CMOS technology. This opens up the possibilities of larger flexible displays that can be rolled up in a pocket and still have an acceptable battery life.
This has been done by combining amorphous silicon and polymer semiconductors which traditionally are high power consumption, not good for portable screens. For example, said the University, an n-mos a-Si:H flexible display column driver consumes around 150µA static current per column - equating to a total column drive power of 700mW in a 15Hz QVGA display, compared with 18mW for the backplane and 660µW for the row drivers.
An equivalent column driver in hybrid CMOS, said the University, consumed under 1µA, and dissipated only dynamic power - a total of 2.3mW for all column drivers in the 15Hz QVGA display, says Electronics Weekly.
The University has focussed on column drivers because all column drivers are active all the time in a display, while only one row driver at a time on.
To be larger than 150mm, these displays have to be on flexible substrates as glass is too brittle.
Researchers are now working on extending the lifetime of the test devices.