PrintScreen: fabricating highly customizable thin-film touch-displays

Abstract

PrintScreen is an enabling technology for digital fabrication of customized flexible displays using thin-film electroluminescence (TFEL). It enables inexpensive and rapid fabrication of highly customized displays in low volume, in a simple lab environment, print shop or even at home. We show how to print ultra-thin (120 µm) segmented and passive matrix displays in greyscale or multi-color on a variety of deformable and rigid substrate materials, including PET film, office paper, leather, metal, stone, and wood. The displays can have custom, unconventional 2D shapes and can be bent, rolled and folded to create 3D shapes. We contribute a systematic overview of graphical display primitives for customized displays and show how to integrate them with static print and printed electronics. Furthermore, we contribute a sensing framework, which leverages the display itself for touch sensing. To demonstrate the wide applicability of PrintScreen, we present application examples from ubiquitous, mobile and wearable computing.