The chemistry behind your LCD flat-screen devices

06 Aug.,2024

 

The chemistry behind your LCD flat-screen devices

In a laboratory at the University of Hull 50 years ago, a new chemical compound was created that would impact the world as much as any drug, fuel or material.

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The man responsible for this society-changing invention was George Gray &#; his new liquid crystal molecules (now known as 5CB) made liquid crystal displays (LCDs) viable and kickstarted the multibillion-dollar flat-screen industry.

The story begins back in when John Stonehouse, a Labour MP and minster for technology under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, established a group to develop a technology that had only just made its debut on Star Trek &#; a full colour flat-screen display.

Unfortunately for Stonehouse, his amazing foresight has since been overshadowed by his attempt (in ) to fake his own death to avoid punishment for multiple counts of fraud and forgery.

But before we get back to the colourful characters involved, let&#;s take a look at the science of LCDs.

Pixels and light

Liquid crystals are a state of matter that sits between liquids and solids. They flow like a liquid, while the molecules within them maintain some order relative to each other, like in a crystal. The long and thin molecules pack against one another in an ordered rectangular arrangement of rows.

Crucially, these liquid crystal structures can interact with light in interesting ways, and this is key to how they work within flat-screen displays. Each pixel within an LCD is comprised of a light source, usually a light-emitting diode (LED), and a thin layer of liquid crystals sandwiched between two filters that scientists describe as polarising.

The light emanating from a bulb, LED or the Sun is known as unpolarised, in the sense that it consists of waves travelling outwards in a variety of orientations. By analogy, imagine a group of schoolchildren all waving skipping ropes. Some will wave their ropes up and down and some side to side, and some at angles in between.

Polarising filters bring order to emanating light waves by only allowing waves with a particular orientation to pass. As well as in LCDs, you find them in some sunglasses, for example. If we return to our rope analogy, imagine the ropes are fed through a slatted gate. The parallel slats of the gate only allow the waves travelling up and down to propagate, while the waves from all the children shaking their ropes in other directions are restricted &#; that&#;s what polarisation does with light.

Now imagine you have two polarising filters. You place one on top of the other and hold them up to the light. As expected, they cut out some of the light getting to your eye. Now, while keeping one in front of the other, you twist a filter by 90 degrees. It turns out that something odd happens &#; they now cut out all the light and together the filters appear opaque. In this orientation the first filter is cutting out the &#;side-to-side&#; polarised light, whilst the second filter cuts out &#;up and down&#; light.

At the heart of LCDs are two polarising filters in this orientation.

And now the liquid crystal

The thin layer of liquid crystals between these polarising filters does something rather clever. The molecules stack in the shape of a helix that twists the polarisation of the light, letting it slip through the second filter.

There&#;s one more thing needed to turn this sandwich of polarising filters and liquid crystals into a pixel within a display. You need some means to switch the liquid crystal&#;s light-twisting properties on and off. That way you can control whether a pixel is bright or dark.

History of Display-What's CRT, LCD, and LED?

Screens are already in every household, from televisions at home, billboards on the roadside to ordering machines in restaurants, we deal with screens all the time. So how did the display evolve? This article will introduce the most representative types, which are CRT, LCD, and LED.

 

CRT

In , Nobel prize-winning physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun created the first CRT (Cathode Ray Tube). The working principle is: the electron gun emits electrons, and the deflection Angle of the electrons is controlled by the deflection coil. Finally, the high-speed electrons hit the phosphorescent material on the screen to make it glow. The voltage is used to adjust the power of the electron beam, which will form different light points on the screen to form various patterns and words.

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In , RCA CT-100, the first civilian color TV supporting NTSC standard, was born, which is also the beginning of the popularity of color TV. Subsequently, countries all over the world are developing and producing television, and the television industry has become a booming new industry.

 

LCD

In , the first LCD (liquid crystal display) was introduced. LCD technology makes flat-panel TVS possible. Later, American inventor James Fergason's work on LCD led to the first LCD television in .

Liquid crystal display (LCD) is a kind of active matrix LCD driven by thin film transistor. It mainly uses current to stimulate the liquid crystal molecules to produce point, line and surface with the back lamp to form a picture. IPS, TFT, and SLCD are all subclasses of LCD. Its working principle is that under the action of the electric field, the alignment direction of liquid crystal molecules changes, so that the transmittance changes, complete the electro-optical conversion, and then use red, green, blue three color filter film, complete the color display.

 

 

LED

LED has been widely valued and developed rapidly because it has many advantages. For example: high brightness, low working voltage, low power consumption, development prospects are extremely broad. At present, it is developing towards higher brightness, higher weather resistance, luminescence density, luminescence uniformity and panchromatic direction.

LCD and LED have something in common, but there are also differences. The biggest difference between LCD and LED is that LCD must rely on passive light source, while LED is an active luminous display device. LCDs allow for more subtle pattern changes than leds, with more delicate displays and brighter colors.

 

Which Is Better?

Each type has its pros and cons, and it's wise to choose according to your usage scenario and budget. LED, for example, is normally thinner than LCD, because we don't need an extra backlight layer, but LEDs don't produce as bright colors as LCDS such as UART LCD display when displaying still images and users can always see sticky images on LEDs.

 

In order to help people choose the right display solution, we continue to develop and innovate. Proculus provides perfect LCD solutions for industrial equipment, medical equipment, smart home, etc., highly flexible customized services and stable product performance make Proculus be popular by customers.


Welcome to learn more: www.proculustech.com

 


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