A novel driver for active matrix electrowetting displays

•A driver is designed for video playing in active matrix electrowetting displays.•The hardware system is designed based on commercial driver integrated chips.•A timing controller is designed in a FPGA according to the system characteristics.•We design new driving waveforms for playing videos in electrowetting displays.•The driving system could work very well for playing 4 gray scale video.

Electrowetting display (EWD) is a reflective display technology in which fluidic pixels can response and switch quickly by electronic control, showing the capability for video-speed reflective display applications. In this paper, a new driver system is proposed and realized for video playing function of active matrix electrowetting display (AM-EWD). The hardware system is designed based on Field-Programmable-Gate-Array (FPGA) and the existing electrophoretic display (EPD) driving integrated chips (IC). A driving logic circuit and FPGA software is introduced for providing the EWD system with driving and timing control. And a set of specific driving waveforms, which is loaded to a lookup table of the FPGA in advance, is designed to display grayscale on EWDs. 4-level gray scale videos have been successfully performed by applying the driving waveforms. To our knowledge, such work has not been reported before.