Sampling function application in the driving waveform of electrowetting displays toward high performance

Microfluidic technology is a new interdisciplinary subject involving chemistry, fluid physics, and biomedical engineering, which has a wide application prospect. The electrowetting display (EWD) technology based on microfluidic technology has also received extensive attention and is expected to become a new generation of paper-like display technology. However, the grayscale response speed of EWDs driven by DC driving waveforms is slow, which seriously affects its use experience. So, combined with the principle of EWDs, the influence of the driving waveform's shape and driving voltage on EWDs' performance was investigated. And then, a novel, to our knowledge, composite function driving waveform based on a sampling function was presented, which consisted of an initial driving stage and a backflow suppressing stage. In the initial driving stage, the pixel was driven quickly by using an overdriving voltage, and the overdriving voltage was attenuated to target voltages, thus preventing the pixel from being destroyed. In the backflow suppressing stage, an AC voltage was used to neutralize trapped charges in the insulating layer. The results showed that compared with the DC driving waveform, the proposed driving performance has been improved in luminance, grayscale response speed, and stability; the maximum luminance of the grayscale has been improved by 5.43% and the response time has been shortened by 12.34%.