SEMINAR

ON
HOW LCD WORKS

Submitted By:
Girish Sharma
Roll No. 1601201
ECE
Final Year
JIET, Jind
Contents:
• Introduction to LCD
• Liquid Crystal
• Nematic Phase Liquid Crystal
• Liquid Crystal Types
• Creating an LCD
• Building your own LCD
• Backlit Vs. Reflective
• LCD System
1. Passive Matrix
2. Active Matrix
3. Color

• LCD Advances
• Applications of LCD

Introduction To LCD
A liquid crystal is a material (normally organic for LCDs) that will flow like liquid
but has some properties normally associated with solids. The LCD has the
distinct advantage of having low power requirement than the LED.

LCDs (liquid
crystal LCD History
display) are Today, LCDs are everywhere we look, but they didn't sprout up
overnight. It took a long time to get from the discovery of liquid crystals
used -- in to the multitude of LCD applications we now enjoy. Liquid crystals were
laptop first discovered in 1888, by Austrian botanist Friedrich Reinitzer.
computers, Reinitzer observed that when he melted a curious cholesterol-like
digital clocks substance (cholesteryl benzoate), it first became a cloudy liquid and
and watches, then cleared up as its temperature rose. Upon cooling, the liquid turned
blue before finally crystallizing. Eighty years passed before RCA made
microwave the first experimental LCD in 1968. Since then, LCD manufacturers have
ovens, CD steadily developed ingenious variations and improvements on the
players and technology, taking the LCD to amazing levels of technical complexity.
many other
electronic devices. LCDs are common because they offer some real advantages
over other display technologies. They are thinner and lighter and draw much less
power than cathode ray tubes (CRTs).

But just what are these things

called liquid crystals? The name
"liquid crystal" sounds like a
contradiction. We think of a crystal
as a solid material like quartz,
usually as hard as rock, and a liquid A simple LCD display from a calculator
is obviously different. How could
any material combine the two?

In this article, you'll find out how liquid crystals pull off this amazing trick, and we
will look at the underlying technology that makes LCDs work. You'll also learn
how the strange characteristics of liquid crystals have been used to create a new
kind of shutter and how grids of these tiny shutters open and close to make
patterns that represent numbers, words or images!

Liquid Crystals
We learned in school that there are three common states of matter: solid, liquid
or gaseous. Solids act the way they do because their molecules always maintain
their orientation and stay in the same position with respect to one another. The
molecules in liquids are just the opposite: They can change their orientation and
move anywhere in the liquid. But there are some substances that can exist in an
odd state that is sort of like a liquid and sort of like a solid. When they are in this
state, their molecules tend to maintain their orientation, like the molecules in a
solid, but also move around to different positions, like the molecules in a liquid.
This means that liquid crystals are neither a solid nor a liquid. That's how they
ended up with their seemingly contradictory name.

So, do liquid crystals act like solids or liquids or something else? It turns out that
liquid crystals are closer to a liquid state than a solid. It takes a fair amount of
heat to change a suitable substance from a solid into a liquid crystal, and it only
takes a little more heat to turn that same liquid crystal into a real liquid. This
explains why liquid crystals are very sensitive to temperature and why they are
used to make thermometers and mood rings. It also explains why a laptop
computer display may act funny in cold weather or during a hot day at the beach!

Nematic Phase Liquid Crystals

Just as there are many varieties of solids and liquids, there is also a variety of
liquid crystal substances. Depending on the temperature and particular nature of
a substance, liquid crystals can be in one of several distinct phases (see below).
In this article, we will discuss liquid crystals in the nematic phase, the liquid
crystals that make LCDs possible.

One feature of liquid crystals is that they're affected by electric current. A

particular sort of nematic liquid crystal, called twisted nematics (TN), is naturally
twisted. Applying an electric current to these liquid crystals will untwist them to
varying degrees, depending on the current's voltage. LCDs use these liquid
crystals because they react predictably to electric current in such a way as to
control light passage.

Liquid Crystal Types

Most liquid crystal molecules are rod-shaped and are broadly
categorized as either thermotropic or lyotropic.
 Image courtesy Dr. Oleg Lavrentovich, Liquid Crystal Institute
Thermotropic liquid crystals will react to changes in temperature or, in
some cases, pressure. The reaction of lyotropic liquid crystals, which
are used in the manufacture of soaps and detergents, depends on the
type of solvent they are mixed with. Thermotropic liquid crystals are
either isotropic or nematic. The key difference is that the molecules in
isotropic liquid crystal substances are random in their arrangement,
while nematics have a definite order or pattern.

The orientation of the molecules in the nematic phase is based on the

director. The director can be anything from a magnetic field to a
surface that has microscopic grooves in it. In the nematic phase, liquid
crystals can be further classified by the way molecules orient
themselves in respect to one another. Smectic, the most common
arrangement, creates layers of molecules. There are many variations of
the smectic phase, such as smectic C, in which the molecules in each
layer tilt at an angle from the previous layer. Another common phase is
cholesteric, also known as chiral nematic. In this phase, the
molecules twist slightly from one layer to the next, resulting in a spiral
formation.

Ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs) use liquid crystal substances that

have chiral molecules in a smectic C type of arrangement because the
spiral nature of these molecules allows the microsecond switching
response time that make FLCs particularly suited to advanced displays.
Surface-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystals (SSFLCs) apply
controlled pressure through the use of a glass plate, suppressing the
spiral of the molecules to make the switching even more rapid.

Creating an LCD
There's far more to building an LCD than simply creating a sheet of liquid
crystals. The combination of four facts makes LCDs possible:

• Light can be polarized.

• Liquid crystals can transmit and change polarized light.
• The structure of liquid crystals can be changed by electric current.
• There are transparent substances that can conduct electricity.

An LCD is a device that uses these four facts in a surprising way!

To create an LCD, you take two pieces of polarized glass. A special polymer
that creates microscopic grooves in the surface is rubbed on the side of the glass
that does not have the polarizing film on it. The grooves must be in the same
direction as the polarizing film. You then add a coating of nematic liquid
crystals to one of the filters. The grooves will cause the first layer of molecules
to align with the filter's orientation. Then add the second piece of glass with the
polarizing film at a right angle to the first piece. Each successive layer of TN
molecules will gradually twist until the uppermost layer is at a 90-degree angle to
the bottom, matching the polarized glass filters.

As light strikes the first filter, it is polarized. The molecules in each layer then guide the
light they receive to the next layer. As the light passes through the liquid crystal layers,
the molecules also change the light's plane of vibration to match their own angle. When
the light reaches the far side of the liquid crystal substance, it vibrates at the same angle
as the final layer of molecules. If the final layer is matched up with the second polarized
glass filter, then the light will pass through.

If we apply an electric charge to liquid crystal molecules, they untwist! When

they straighten out, they change the angle of the light passing through them so
that it no longer matches the angle of the top polarizing filter. Consequently, no
light can pass through that area of the LCD, which makes that area darker than
the surrounding areas.

Building Your Own LCD

Building a simple LCD is easier than you think. Your start with the sandwich of
glass and liquid crystals described above and add two transparent electrodes to
it. For example, imagine that you want to create the simplest possible LCD with
just a single rectangular electrode on it. The layers would look like this:

The LCD needed to do this job is very basic. It has a mirror (A) in back, which
makes it reflective. Then, we add a piece of glass (B) with a polarizing film on the
bottom side, and a common electrode plane (C) made of indium-tin oxide on top.
A common electrode plane covers the entire area of the LCD. Above that is the
layer of liquid crystal substance (D). Next comes another piece of glass (E) with
an electrode in the shape of the rectangle on the bottom and, on top, another
polarizing film (F), at a right angle to the first one.
The electrode is hooked up to a power source like a battery. When there is no
current, light entering through the front of the LCD will simply hit the mirror and
bounce right back out. But when the battery supplies current to the electrodes,
the liquid crystals between the common-plane electrode and the electrode
shaped like a rectangle untwist and block the light in that region from passing
through. That makes the LCD show the rectangle as a black area.

Backlit vs. Reflective

Note that our simple LCD required an external light source. Liquid crystal
materials emit no light of their own. Small and inexpensive LCDs are often
reflective, which means to display anything they must reflect light from external
light sources. Look at an LCD watch: The numbers appear where small
electrodes charge the liquid crystals and make the layers untwist so that light is
not transmitting through the polarized film.

Most computer displays are lit with built-in fluorescent tubes above, beside and
sometimes behind the LCD. A white diffusion panel behind the LCD redirects and
scatters the light evenly to ensure a uniform display. On its way through filters,
liquid crystal layers and electrode layers, a lot of this light is lost -- often more
than half!

In our example, we had a common electrode plane and a single electrode bar
that controlled which liquid crystals responded to an electric charge. If you take
the layer that contains the single electrode and add a few more, you can begin to
build more sophisticated displays.

LCD Systems
Common-plane-based LCDs are good for simple displays that need to show the
same information over and over again like watches and microwave timers.
Although the hexagonal bar shape illustrated previously is the most common
form of electrode arrangement in such devices, almost any shape is
possible.There are two main types of LCDs used in computers, passive matrix
and active matrix. In the next two sections, you'll learn about each of these
types.

Passive Matrix
Passive-matrix LCDs use a simple grid to supply the charge to a particular pixel
on the display. Creating the grid is quite a process! It starts with two glass layers
called substrates. One substrate is given columns and the other is given rows
made from a transparent conductive material. This is usually indium-tin oxide.
The rows or columns are connected to integrated circuits that control when a
charge is sent down a particular column or row. The liquid crystal material is
sandwiched between the two glass substrates, and a polarizing film is added to
the outer side of each substrate. To turn on a pixel, the integrated circuit sends a
charge down the correct column of one substrate and a ground activated on the
correct row of the other. The row and column intersect at the designated pixel,
and that delivers the voltage to untwist the liquid crystals at that pixel.

The simplicity of the passive-matrix system is beautiful, but it has significant

drawbacks, notably slow response time and imprecise voltage control.
Response time refers to the LCD's ability to refresh the image displayed. The
easiest way to observe slow response time in a passive-matrix LCD is to move
the mouse pointer quickly from one side of the screen to the other. You will notice
a series of "ghosts" following the pointer. Imprecise voltage control hinders the
passive matrix's ability to influence only one pixel at a time. When voltage is
applied to untwist one pixel, the pixels around it also partially untwist, which
makes images appear fuzzy and lacking in contrast.

Active Matrix
Active-matrix LCDs depend on thin film transistors (TFT). Basically, TFTs are
tiny switching transistors and capacitors. They are arranged in a matrix on a
glass substrate. To address a particular pixel, the proper row is switched on, and
then a charge is sent down the correct column. Since all of the other rows that
the column intersects are turned off, only the capacitor at the designated pixel
receives a charge. The capacitor is able to hold the charge until the next refresh
cycle. And if we carefully control the amount of voltage supplied to a crystal, we
can make it untwist only enough to allow some light through.

By doing this in very exact, very small increments, LCDs can create a gray
scale. Most displays today offer 256 levels of brightness per pixel.

Color

An LCD that can show colors must have three subpixels with red, green and
blue color filters to create each color pixel.

Through the careful control and variation of the voltage applied, the intensity of
each subpixel can range over 256 shades. Combining the subpixels produces a
possible palette of 16.8 million colors (256 shades of red x 256 shades of green
x 256 shades of blue), as shown below. These color displays take an enormous
number of transistors. For example, a typical laptop computer supports
resolutions up to 1,024x768. If we multiply 1,024 columns by 768 rows by 3
subpixels, we get 2,359,296 transistors etched onto the glass! If there is a
problem with any of these transistors, it creates a "bad pixel" on the display. Most
active matrix displays have a few bad pixels scattered across the screen.
LCD Advances
LCD technology is constantly evolving. LCDs today employ several variations of
liquid crystal technology, including super twisted nematics (STN), dual scan
twisted nematics (DSTN), ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) and surface stabilized
ferroelectric liquid crystal (SSFLC).

Display size is limited by the quality-control problems faced by manufacturers.

Simply put, to increase display size, manufacturers must add more pixels and
transistors. As they increase the number of pixels and transistors, they also
increase the chance of including a bad transistor in a display. Manufacturers of
existing large LCDs often reject about 40 percent of the panels that come off the
assembly line. The level of rejection directly affects LCD price since the sales of
the good LCDs must cover the cost of manufacturing both the good and bad
ones. Only advances in manufacturing can lead to affordable displays in bigger
sizes

Applications of LCD

• PROJECTION TELEVISION
• DIGITAL CLOCKS and WATCHES
• COMPUTER MONITOR
• LAPTOP COMPUTERS
• MICROWAVE OWENS
• CD Players
PROJECTION TV
Or maybe you need to equip a room, like a classroom or conference room, for
multimedia presentations with a large audience. A projection TV gives you a lot of
flexibility and is usually much better than the standard combination of a 35mm
slide projector, overhead projector and TV/VCR.

Projection TV display showing a bright, contrast-rich, high resolution

picture on a 64-inch screen

In this article, we will look at the technology of projection TVs and portable
projectors, and find out how they work to display such large, clear images.
Projection vs. Conventional TV
A conventional TV uses a device called a cathode ray tube to display its image.

The negatively-charged cathode makes a beam of electrons that is drawn toward

the screen by the positively charged anode. The beam strikes at the front of the
CRT, which is coated with special chemicals called phosphors. When the beam
strikes the phosphor, it lights up that area of the tube (a pixel). For a color TV,
there are three electron beams and three types of phosphors on the tube for
each pixel -- red, blue and green -- which, when excited, can make any color.
The electron beam moves along the tube, either horizontally or vertically, using
magnetic coils alongside the tube

Because the CRT is made of glass, there are limits to its maximum size. Today's
CRT TVs usually measure less than 40 inches (101 cm) diagonally. This size is
not practical for a home theater or large auditorium.

In contrast to conventional TVs, projection TVs form a small image on a device

inside the projector -- either a CRT or LCD -- and then shine that image onto a
large screen located elsewhere. In one type of projection TV, the screen is
located within the TV box itself. This type of projection TV is called a rear or
reflective projection. In this type, light reflects off the projection display panel
and is then projected onto the screen.

Rear or reflective projection display system

In another type of projection TV, the screen is located across the room. In this
type of projection TV, called a front or transmissive projection, light passes
through the image-forming display panel and is then projected onto a screen.

Front or transmissive projection display systems

REFRENCES
• BOOKS
1. Electronic Devices And Circuit Theory-Boylested
2. Working Of LCD Based Devices-Dr. S.R. Mckenzie
3. Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Devices-Ford & Tynor
• WEBSITES
www.howstuffworks.com
www.opterxlcd.com
www.fpdp.org
www.felcd.org.in