Product Applications

Abstract

Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have been commercially available for more than 20 years, but until recently have been restricted to relatively small size. Such displays are ubiquitous in watches, calculators, radios, and other products requiring indicators and three or four alphanumeric characters. Recently, improvements in the liquid crystal materials have occurred, allowing large displays to be manufactured. These have achieved widespread acceptance in portable computers, very light laptop computers, and dedicated word processors. Other products include flat screen and projection television systems. Additional improvements in the technology have led to full color displays, now entering production. These improvements include the addition of an active switch to control the action of the liquid crystal at each picture element or pixel. The active switch can be a thin film diode or a thin film transistor, and, for large displays, the number of active elements approaches the number of transistors in a dynamic memory.