Technical evolution of liquid crystal displays

Abstract

I n 1888, more than a century ago, the Austrian botanist FriedrichReinitzer discovered an intermediate state of matter between isotropic liquid and lattice-structured crystal [1][2][3]. Th is state, later termed liquid crystal (LC), remained merely a novelty for many years until suitable applications for the technology began to become apparent. From the late 1960s, following the realization that various display applications were possible, the popularity of liquid crystal as a research fi eld expanded rapidly, attracting the interest of many scientists who made fundamental contributions to the technologies that have led to the spectacular success of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Th e development of the twisted nematic (TN) [4] and supertwisted nematic (STN) [5] cell confi gurations, along with the necessary manufacturing technologies [6][7][8][9], resulted in the birth of the LCD industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The subsequent development of thin-film transistor (TFT) technology provided a further boost to the industry in the late 1980s [14,15]. Th e boom was signifi cantly supported by the advancement of material technologies such as the highly reliable manufacturing of liquid crystal base materials, and the development of polymers for the alignment layer, color fi lter materials, and sheet-type polarizers formed from the poly(vinyl alcohol)-iodine complex.In the 1990s, LCDs occupied an important position in the display market primarily through notebook applications, although the cathode ray tube (CRT) continued to dominate the desktop monitor and television markets. Th e plasma display panel (PDP), which appeared in the commercial market in 1997, pioneered the large-area fl at panel display market. It was widely predicted at the time that PDPs would maintain the lead in the large-area display market and that LCDs in small-display information technology (IT) applications would soon be replaced by new technologies such as displays based on organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) [16,17]. Such predictions were based on the belief that the LCD technology suff ered from serious limitations in terms of both off -axis image quality and moving picture quality, and also that it had proved diffi cult to obtain reasonable manufacturing yields of large-area TFT panels. However, these predictions, as we now know, turned out to be incorrect. Th e application of LCDs has expanded rapidly in recent years from purely information technology (IT) applications to the television and mobile display markets, and now even to very-large-area digital information displays (DIDs).Interestingly, while LCDs penetrated the traditional territories of other display technologies including CRTs and PDPs, attracting inevitable and heavy competition from these technologies, the most critical competitors were in fact alternative LCD technologies. A range of LCD modes and technologies are now applied in the same areas of application and are compared directly with one another in the market. In applicat...

Review of Display Technologies Focusing on Power Consumption

“…The first observations of liquid crystalline behavior were made towards the end of the 19th century by Reinitzer and Lehmann [24], and since then, LCD technology has enjoyed significant advances and it currently occupies the largest proportion of the entire display market share [25].…”

Alignment of Liquid Crystals Using a Molecular Layer with Patterned Molecular Density

“…The lateral fi eld generated on the edge of an electrode creates a weak anisotropic force on LCs, which can be used to select the preferable falling direction of the LCs, as used in the patterned vertical alignment mode. [ 18 ] However, in the B and C cells where the LCs align planar along two opposite directions, the disclination lines cannot be infl uenced by the lateral fi eld due to the large surface frictional energy barrier. [ 19 , 20 ] We applied a weak electric voltage (1.8 V) to the C cell and increased the temperature to just below the nematic (N)-isotropic (Iso) phase transition temperature ( T NI ) of bulk LCs (OES treatment).…”

Structure and application of polarizer film for thin-film-transistor liquid crystal displays

“…TFT-LCDs have been exploited for several commercial display modes including twisted nematic (TN), in-plane switching (IPS), multi-vertical alignment (MVA), etc. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Polarizer film (POL) is an essential and important component in the TFT-LCDs, which is developed by the technology of stretching film with iodine or other dichroic dye molecules [9,10].…”