tft display construction and working factory

Display screen is everywhere nowadays. Do you still remember the TVs or computer monitors 20 years ago? They were quadrate, huge and heavy. Now let’s look at the flat, thin and light screen in front of you, have you ever wondered why is there such a big difference?

Actually, the monitors 20 year ago were CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) displays, which requires a large space to run the inner component. And now the screen here in your presence is the LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen.

As mentioned above, LCD is the abbreviation of Liquid Crystal Display. It’s a new display technology making use of the optical-electrical characteristic of liquid crystal.

Liquid crystal is a state of substance that has both the characteristics of liquid and solid crystal. It don’t emit light itself, but it can let the light pass perfectly in specific direction. Meanwhile, liquid crystal molecule will rotate under the influence of a electric field, and then the light goes through it will rotate too. That said, liquid crystal can be a switch of light, which is the key in display technology.

STN LCD: STN is for Super-twisted Nematic. The liquid crystal in STN LCD rotate more angles than that in TN LCD, and have a different electrical feature, allowing STN LCD to display more information. There are many improved version of STN LCD like DSTN LCD (double layer) and CSTN LCD (color). This LCD is used in many early phones, computers and outdoor devices.

TFT LCD: TFT is for Thin Film Transistor. It’s the latest generation of LCD technology and has been applied in all the displaying scenario including electronic devices, motor cars, industrial machines, etc. When you see the word ‘transistor’, you may realize there’s integrated circuits in TFT LCD. That’s correct and the secret that TFT LCD has the advantage of high resolution and full color display.

In a simple way, we can divide TFT LCD into three parts, from bottom to top they are: light system, circuit system and light and color control system.In manufacturing process, we’ll start from inner light and color control system and then stretch out to whole module.

It’s accustomed to divide TFT LCD manufacturing process into three main part: array, cell and module. The former two steps are about the production of light and color control system, which contains TFT, CF (color filter) and LC (liquid crystal), named a cell. And the last step is the assembly of cell, circuit and light system.

First, let me introduce a crucial material, ITO, to you. ITO, abbreviation of Indium tin oxide, has the characteristic of electrical conductivity and optical transparency, as well as can be easily deposited as a thin film. Thus it’s widely used to create circuit on glass.

Now let’s turn to the production of TFT and CF. Here is a common method called PR (photoresist) method. The whole process of PR method will be demonstrated in TFT production.

◇   Use glue to build a boundary for LC on both glass. And on CF glass, apply one more layer of conductive adhesive. This enable LC molecule link to the control circuit.

◇   Put the diffuser film and prism film on light source in turn. Together with reflector film, these two films are used to turn the point light from light source into area light and enhance light intensity.

When compared to the ordinary LCD, TFT LCD gives very sharp and crisp picture/text with shorter response time. TFT LCD displays are used in more and more applications, giving products better visual presentation.

TFT is an abbreviation for "Thin Film Transistor". The colorTFT LCD display has transistors made up of thin films of Amorphous silicon deposited on a glass. It serves as a control valve to provide an appropriate voltage onto liquid crystals for individual sub-pixels. That is why TFT LCD display is also called Active Matrix display.

A TFT LCD has a liquid crystal layer between a glass substrate formed with TFTs and transparent pixel electrodes and another glass substrate with a color filter (RGB) and transparent counter electrodes. Each pixel in an active matrix is paired with a transistor that includes capacitor which gives each sub-pixel the ability to retain its charge, instead of requiring an electrical charge sent each time it needed to be changed. This means that TFT LCD displays are more responsive.

To understand how TFT LCD works, we first need to grasp the concept of field-effect transistor (FET). FET is a type of transistor which uses electric field to control the flow of electrical current. It is a component with three terminals: source, gate, and drain. FETs control the flow of current by the application of a voltage to the gate, which in turn alters the conductivity between the drain and source.

Using FET, we can build a circuit as below. Data Bus sends signal to FET Source, when SEL SIGNAL applies voltage to the Gate, driving voltage is then created on TFT LCD panel. A sub-pixel will be lit up. A TFT LCD display contains thousand or million of such driving circuits.

Topway started TFT LCD manufacturing more than15 years ago. We produce color TFT LCD display from 1.8 to 15+ inches with different resolutions and interfaces. Here is some more readings about how to choose the right TFT LCD.

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A thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD) is a variant of a liquid-crystal display that uses thin-film-transistor technologyactive matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven (i.e. with segments directly connected to electronics outside the LCD) LCDs with a few segments.

In February 1957, John Wallmark of RCA filed a patent for a thin film MOSFET. Paul K. Weimer, also of RCA implemented Wallmark"s ideas and developed the thin-film transistor (TFT) in 1962, a type of MOSFET distinct from the standard bulk MOSFET. It was made with thin films of cadmium selenide and cadmium sulfide. The idea of a TFT-based liquid-crystal display (LCD) was conceived by Bernard Lechner of RCA Laboratories in 1968. In 1971, Lechner, F. J. Marlowe, E. O. Nester and J. Tults demonstrated a 2-by-18 matrix display driven by a hybrid circuit using the dynamic scattering mode of LCDs.T. Peter Brody, J. A. Asars and G. D. Dixon at Westinghouse Research Laboratories developed a CdSe (cadmium selenide) TFT, which they used to demonstrate the first CdSe thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD).active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AM LCD) using CdSe TFTs in 1974, and then Brody coined the term "active matrix" in 1975.high-resolution and high-quality electronic visual display devices use TFT-based active matrix displays.

The liquid crystal displays used in calculators and other devices with similarly simple displays have direct-driven image elements, and therefore a voltage can be easily applied across just one segment of these types of displays without interfering with the other segments. This would be impractical for a large display, because it would have a large number of (color) picture elements (pixels), and thus it would require millions of connections, both top and bottom for each one of the three colors (red, green and blue) of every pixel. To avoid this issue, the pixels are addressed in rows and columns, reducing the connection count from millions down to thousands. The column and row wires attach to transistor switches, one for each pixel. The one-way current passing characteristic of the transistor prevents the charge that is being applied to each pixel from being drained between refreshes to a display"s image. Each pixel is a small capacitor with a layer of insulating liquid crystal sandwiched between transparent conductive ITO layers.

The circuit layout process of a TFT-LCD is very similar to that of semiconductor products. However, rather than fabricating the transistors from silicon, that is formed into a crystalline silicon wafer, they are made from a thin film of amorphous silicon that is deposited on a glass panel. The silicon layer for TFT-LCDs is typically deposited using the PECVD process.

Polycrystalline silicon is sometimes used in displays requiring higher TFT performance. Examples include small high-resolution displays such as those found in projectors or viewfinders. Amorphous silicon-based TFTs are by far the most common, due to their lower production cost, whereas polycrystalline silicon TFTs are more costly and much more difficult to produce.

The twisted nematic display is one of the oldest and frequently cheapest kind of LCD display technologies available. TN displays benefit from fast pixel response times and less smearing than other LCD display technology, but suffer from poor color reproduction and limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction. Colors will shift, potentially to the point of completely inverting, when viewed at an angle that is not perpendicular to the display. Modern, high end consumer products have developed methods to overcome the technology"s shortcomings, such as RTC (Response Time Compensation / Overdrive) technologies. Modern TN displays can look significantly better than older TN displays from decades earlier, but overall TN has inferior viewing angles and poor color in comparison to other technology.

Most TN panels can represent colors using only six bits per RGB channel, or 18 bit in total, and are unable to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available using 24-bit color. Instead, these panels display interpolated 24-bit color using a dithering method that combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade. They can also use a form of temporal dithering called Frame Rate Control (FRC), which cycles between different shades with each new frame to simulate an intermediate shade. Such 18 bit panels with dithering are sometimes advertised as having "16.2 million colors". These color simulation methods are noticeable to many people and highly bothersome to some.gamut (often referred to as a percentage of the NTSC 1953 color gamut) are also due to backlighting technology. It is not uncommon for older displays to range from 10% to 26% of the NTSC color gamut, whereas other kind of displays, utilizing more complicated CCFL or LED phosphor formulations or RGB LED backlights, may extend past 100% of the NTSC color gamut, a difference quite perceivable by the human eye.

The transmittance of a pixel of an LCD panel typically does not change linearly with the applied voltage,sRGB standard for computer monitors requires a specific nonlinear dependence of the amount of emitted light as a function of the RGB value.

In-plane switching was developed by Hitachi Ltd. in 1996 to improve on the poor viewing angle and the poor color reproduction of TN panels at that time.

Initial iterations of IPS technology were characterised by slow response time and a low contrast ratio but later revisions have made marked improvements to these shortcomings. Because of its wide viewing angle and accurate color reproduction (with almost no off-angle color shift), IPS is widely employed in high-end monitors aimed at professional graphic artists, although with the recent fall in price it has been seen in the mainstream market as well. IPS technology was sold to Panasonic by Hitachi.

In 2004, Hydis Technologies Co., Ltd licensed its AFFS patent to Japan"s Hitachi Displays. Hitachi is using AFFS to manufacture high end panels in their product line. In 2006, Hydis also licensed its AFFS to Sanyo Epson Imaging Devices Corporation.

It achieved pixel response which was fast for its time, wide viewing angles, and high contrast at the cost of brightness and color reproduction.Response Time Compensation) technologies.

Less expensive PVA panels often use dithering and FRC, whereas super-PVA (S-PVA) panels all use at least 8 bits per color component and do not use color simulation methods.BRAVIA LCD TVs offer 10-bit and xvYCC color support, for example, the Bravia X4500 series. S-PVA also offers fast response times using modern RTC technologies.

A technology developed by Samsung is Super PLS, which bears similarities to IPS panels, has wider viewing angles, better image quality, increased brightness, and lower production costs. PLS technology debuted in the PC display market with the release of the Samsung S27A850 and S24A850 monitors in September 2011.

TFT dual-transistor pixel or cell technology is a reflective-display technology for use in very-low-power-consumption applications such as electronic shelf labels (ESL), digital watches, or metering. DTP involves adding a secondary transistor gate in the single TFT cell to maintain the display of a pixel during a period of 1s without loss of image or without degrading the TFT transistors over time. By slowing the refresh rate of the standard frequency from 60 Hz to 1 Hz, DTP claims to increase the power efficiency by multiple orders of magnitude.

Due to the very high cost of building TFT factories, there are few major OEM panel vendors for large display panels. The glass panel suppliers are as follows:

External consumer display devices like a TFT LCD feature one or more analog VGA, DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort interface, with many featuring a selection of these interfaces. Inside external display devices there is a controller board that will convert the video signal using color mapping and image scaling usually employing the discrete cosine transform (DCT) in order to convert any video source like CVBS, VGA, DVI, HDMI, etc. into digital RGB at the native resolution of the display panel. In a laptop the graphics chip will directly produce a signal suitable for connection to the built-in TFT display. A control mechanism for the backlight is usually included on the same controller board.

The low level interface of STN, DSTN, or TFT display panels use either single ended TTL 5 V signal for older displays or TTL 3.3 V for slightly newer displays that transmits the pixel clock, horizontal sync, vertical sync, digital red, digital green, digital blue in parallel. Some models (for example the AT070TN92) also feature input/display enable, horizontal scan direction and vertical scan direction signals.

New and large (>15") TFT displays often use LVDS signaling that transmits the same contents as the parallel interface (Hsync, Vsync, RGB) but will put control and RGB bits into a number of serial transmission lines synchronized to a clock whose rate is equal to the pixel rate. LVDS transmits seven bits per clock per data line, with six bits being data and one bit used to signal if the other six bits need to be inverted in order to maintain DC balance. Low-cost TFT displays often have three data lines and therefore only directly support 18 bits per pixel. Upscale displays have four or five data lines to support 24 bits per pixel (truecolor) or 30 bits per pixel respectively. Panel manufacturers are slowly replacing LVDS with Internal DisplayPort and Embedded DisplayPort, which allow sixfold reduction of the number of differential pairs.

The bare display panel will only accept a digital video signal at the resolution determined by the panel pixel matrix designed at manufacture. Some screen panels will ignore the LSB bits of the color information to present a consistent interface (8 bit -> 6 bit/color x3).

With analogue signals like VGA, the display controller also needs to perform a high speed analog to digital conversion. With digital input signals like DVI or HDMI some simple reordering of the bits is needed before feeding it to the rescaler if the input resolution doesn"t match the display panel resolution.

The statements are applicable to Merck KGaA as well as its competitors JNC Corporation (formerly Chisso Corporation) and DIC (formerly Dainippon Ink & Chemicals). All three manufacturers have agreed not to introduce any acutely toxic or mutagenic liquid crystals to the market. They cover more than 90 percent of the global liquid crystal market. The remaining market share of liquid crystals, produced primarily in China, consists of older, patent-free substances from the three leading world producers and have already been tested for toxicity by them. As a result, they can also be considered non-toxic.

Kawamoto, H. (2012). "The Inventors of TFT Active-Matrix LCD Receive the 2011 IEEE Nishizawa Medal". Journal of Display Technology. 8 (1): 3–4. Bibcode:2012JDisT...8....3K. doi:10.1109/JDT.2011.2177740. ISSN 1551-319X.

Brody, T. Peter; Asars, J. A.; Dixon, G. D. (November 1973). "A 6 × 6 inch 20 lines-per-inch liquid-crystal display panel". 20 (11): 995–1001. Bibcode:1973ITED...20..995B. doi:10.1109/T-ED.1973.17780. ISSN 0018-9383.

K. H. Lee; H. Y. Kim; K. H. Park; S. J. Jang; I. C. Park & J. Y. Lee (June 2006). "A Novel Outdoor Readability of Portable TFT-LCD with AFFS Technology". SID Symposium Digest of Technical Papers. AIP. 37 (1): 1079–82. doi:10.1889/1.2433159. S2CID 129569963.

Kim, Sae-Bom; Kim, Woong-Ki; Chounlamany, Vanseng; Seo, Jaehwan; Yoo, Jisu; Jo, Hun-Je; Jung, Jinho (15 August 2012). "Identification of multi-level toxicity of liquid crystal display wastewater toward Daphnia magna and Moina macrocopa". Journal of Hazardous Materials. Seoul, Korea; Laos, Lao. 227–228: 327–333. doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2012.05.059. PMID 22677053.

There’re more than 300 procedures to produce TFT LCD. The most advanced LCD, in which the array and cell process are highly automatic. Technically, every step in the process can lead to defects, and most of the defects have been eliminated through the development of TFT LCD technology.

In the LC filling process, if the quantity of LC injected is not enough, the spare space will form bubbles. And loose LC containing sealant will result in LC leakage.

Point defect is a kind of defect that some point on your screen don’t display correctly. There are mainly three situations: the point keeps displaying black or whitewhen the screen is working or the point can only display a single color.

For the first two situations, that’s because the circuit on the TFT and CF controlling that defective pixel point is shorted or broken. While the third situation is caused by damaged color pixel.

The production of the circuit and color pixel is under micro scale, and the technology is similar to semiconductor technology. Hundreds of thousands micro materials will be printed during the production process, you can understand some of the materials not being printed correctly, which result in the point defect.

Unlike point defect, this larger scale defect is caused by the failure of external FPC or PCBA, or a bad connection between FPC and cell. Therefore, a bunch of pixels connected to these IC are out of control, and we see those defects.

Usually, assembly of cell and IC is under heat and should be positioned accurately. Problems with IC connection will be checked out very soon, followed by the adjustment on machine parameter.

In LCD, newton’s rings may occur on screen when two glass substrate haven’t been sealed well, so that one of the glass may form a convex lens and lead to light interference.

You may notice there are some screens have uneven display, which means some white area appears in dark picture or vice versa. We call this ‘mura’, a word originated from Japanese.

Mura is very common but it doesn’t affect the screen function severely, however it still bring bad look. Hence, many high end display manufacturers have their own standards of mura, and the displays without mura are of the best quality.

Among the causes listed, thickness of the whole cell is the most critical one, and there are many factors related to that. Researches provide a lot of advice to adjust the thickness of the whole cell:

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Important technical improvements of LCD, such as LED backlighting and wide viewing Angle, are directly related to LCD. And account for an LCD display 80% of the cost of the LCD panel, enough to show that the LCD panel is the core part of the entire display, the quality of the LCD panel, can be said to directly determine the quality of an LCD display.

The production of civil LCD displays is just an assembly process. The LCD panel, the main control circuit, shell, and other parts of the main assembly, basically will not have too complex technical problems.

Does this mean that LCDS are low-tech products? In fact, it is not. The production and manufacturing process of the LCD panels is very complicated, requiring at least 300 process processes. The whole process needs to be carried out in a dust-free environment and with precise technology.

The general structure of the LCD panel is not very complex, now the structure of the LCD panel is divided into two parts: the LCD panel and the backlight system.

Due to the LCD does not shine, so you need to use another light source to illuminate, the function of the backlight system is to this, but currently used CCFL lamp or LED backlight, don’t have the characteristics of the surface light source, so you need to guide plate, spreadsheet components, such as linear or point sources of light evenly across the surface, in order to make the entire LCD panel on the differences of luminous intensity is the same, but it is very difficult, to achieve the ideal state can be to try to reduce brightness non-uniformity, the backlight system has a lot to the test of design and workmanship.

In addition, there is a driving IC and printed circuit board beside the LCD panel, which is mainly used to control the rotation of LCD molecules in the LCD panel and the transmission of display signals. The LCD plate is thin and translucent without electricity. It is roughly shaped like a sandwich, with an LCD sandwiched between a layer of TFT glass and a layer of colored filters.

LCD with light refraction properties of solid crystals, with fluid flow characteristics at the same time, under the drive of the electrode, can be arranged in a way that, in accordance with the master want to control the strength of the light through, and then on the color filter, through the red, green, blue three colors of each pixel toning, eventually get the full-screen image.

According to the functional division, the LCD panel can be divided into the LCD panel and the backlight system. However, to produce an LCD panel, it needs to go through three complicated processes, namely, the manufacturing process of the front segment Array,the manufacturing process of the middle segment Cell, and the assembly of the rear segment module. Today we will be here, for you in detail to introduce the production of the LCD panel manufacturing process.

The manufacturing process of the LCD panel Array is mainly composed of four parts: film, yellow light, etch and peel film. If we just look at it in this way, many netizens do not understand the specific meaning of these four steps and why they do so.

First of all, the motion and arrangement of LCD molecules need electrons to drive them. Therefore, on the TFT glass, the carrier of LCD, there must be conductive parts to control the motion of LCD. In this case, we use ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) to do this.ITO is transparent and also acts as a thin-film conductive crystal so that it doesn’t block the backlight.

The different arrangement of LCD molecules and the rapid motion change can ensure that each pixel displays the corresponding color accurately and the image changes accurately and quickly, which requires the precision of LCD molecule control.ITO film needs special treatment, just like printing the circuit on the PCB board, drawing the conductive circuit on the whole LCD board.

First, the ITO film layer needs to be deposited on the TFT glass, so that there is a smooth and uniform ITO film on the whole TFT glass. Then, using ionized water, the ITO glass is cleaned and ready for the next step.

Next, a photoresist is applied to the glass on which ITO film is deposited, and a uniform photoresist layer is formed on the ITO glass. After baking for a period of time, the solvent of the photoresist was partially volatilized to increase the adhesion of the photoresist material to the ITO glass.

The exposed part of the photoresist is then washed away with the developer, leaving only the unexposed part, and the dissolved photoresist is then washed away with deionized water.

Then etch off the ITO film without photoresist covering with appropriate acid etching solution, and only retain the ITO film under the photoresist. ITO glass is conductive glass (In2O3 and SnO2). The ITO film not covered by photoresist is easy to react with acid, while the ITO film covered by photoresist can be retained to obtain the corresponding wire electrode.

Rinse the basic label of glass with an organic solution and remove the photolithographic tape after reaction to keep the glass clean. This completes the first thin-film conductive crystal process, which generally requires at least five identical processes to form a complex and sophisticated pattern of electrodes on the glass.

This completes the previous Array process. It is not difficult to see from the whole process that ITO film is deposited, photoresist coated, exposed, developed, and etched on TFT glass, and finally, ITO electrode pattern designed in the early stage is formed on TFT glass to control the movement of LCD molecules on the glass. The general steps of the whole production process are not complicated, but the technical details and precautions are very complicated, so we will not introduce them here. Interested friends can consult relevant materials by themselves.

The glass that the LCD board uses makes a craft also very exquisite. (The manufacturing process flow of the LCD display screen)At present, the world’s largest LCD panel glass, mainly by the United States Corning, Japan Asahi glass manufacturers, located in the upstream of the production of LCD panel, these manufacturers have mastered the glass production technology patents. A few months ago, the earthquake caused a corning glass furnace shutdown incident, which has caused a certain impact on the LCD panel industry, you can see its position in the industry.

As mentioned earlier, the LCD panel is structured like a sandwich, with an LCD sandwiched between the lower TFT glass and the upper color filter. The terminal Cell process in LCD panel manufacturing involves the TFT glass being glued to the top and bottom of a colored filter, but this is not a simple bonding process that requires a lot of technical detail.

As you can see from the figure above, the glass is divided into 6 pieces of the same size. In other words, the LCD made from this glass is finally cut into 6 pieces, and the size of each piece is the final size. When the glass is cast, the specifications and sizes of each glass have been designed in advance.

After the TFT glass substrate is cleaned, a sealant coating is applied to allow the TFT glass substrate to be bonded to the color filter and to prevent LCD outflow.

Finally, the conductive adhesive is applied to the frame in the bonding direction of the glass of the color filter to ensure that external electrons can flow into the LCD layer. Then, according to the bonding mark on the TFT glass substrate and the color filter, two pieces of glass are bonded together, and the bonding material is solidified at high temperatures to make the upper and lower glasses fit statically.

Color filters are very important components of LCD panels. Manufacturers of color filters, like glass substrate manufacturers, are upstream of LCD panel manufacturers. Their oversupply or undersupply can directly affect the production schedule of LCD panels and indirectly affect the end market.

Finally, a polarizer is placed on both sides of each LCD substrate, with the horizontal polarizer facing outwards and the vertical polarizer facing inwards.

A polarizer is an optical plate that allows only light from a certain direction to pass through. It is an optical element that converts natural light into straight polarized light. The mechanism of action is to make the vertical direction light pass through the straight incident light after passing through the vertical polarizer, and the other horizontal direction light is absorbed, or use reflection and scattering and other effects to make its shade.

When making LCD panel, must up and down each use one, and presents the alternating direction, when has the electric field and does not have the electric field, causes the light to produce the phase difference and to present the light and dark state, uses in the display subtitle or the pattern.

The rear Module manufacturing process is mainly the integration of the drive IC pressing of the LCD substrate and the printed circuit board. This part can transmit the display signal received from the main control circuit to the drive IC to drive the LCD molecules to rotate and display the image. In addition, the backlight part will be integrated with the LCD substrate at this stage, and the complete LCD panel is completed.

Firstly, the heteroconductive adhesive is pressed on the two edges, which allows external electrons to enter the LCD substrate layer and acts as a bridge for electronic transmission

Next is the drive IC press. The main function of the drive IC is to output the required voltage to each pixel and control the degree of torsion of the LCD molecules. The drive IC is divided into two types. The source drive IC located in the X-axis is responsible for the input of data. It is characterized by high frequency and has an image function. The gate drive IC located in the Y-axis is responsible for the degree and speed of torsion of LCD molecules, which directly affects the response time of the LCD display. However, there are already many LCD panels that only have driving IC in the X-axis direction, perhaps because the Y-axis drive IC function has been integrated and simplified.

The press of the flexible circuit board can transmit data signals and act as the bridge between the external printed circuit and LCD. It can be bent and thus becomes a flexible or flexible circuit board

The manufacturing process of the LCD substrate still has a lot of details and matters needing attention, for example, rinse with clean, dry, dry, dry, ultrasonic cleaning, exposure, development and so on and so on, all have very strict technical details and requirements, so as to produce qualified eyes panel, interested friends can consult relevant technical information by a search engine.

LCD (LC) is a kind of LCD, which has the properties of light transmission and refraction of solid Crystal, as well as the flow property of Liquid. It is because of this property that it will be applied to the display field.

However, LCD does not emit light autonomously, so the display equipment using LCD as the display medium needs to be equipped with another backlight system.

First, a backplate is needed as the carrier of the light source. The common light source for LCD display equipment is CCFL cold cathode backlight, but it has started to switch to an LED backlight, but either one needs a backplate as the carrier.

CCFL backlight has been with LCD for a long time. Compared with LED backlight, CCFL backlight has many defects. However, it has gradually evolved to save 50% of the lamp and enhance the transmittance of the LCD panel, so as to achieve the purpose of energy-saving.

However, no matter CCFL backlight or LED backlight is placed in various ways, the nature of the backlight source cannot be a surface light source, but a linear light source or point light source. Therefore, other components are needed to evenly distribute the light to the whole surface. This task is accomplished by the diffuser plate and diffuser plate.

On the transparent diffuser plate, point-like printing can block part of the light. The LED backlight on the side drives the light from the side of the diffuser plate, and the light reflects and refracts back and forth in the diffuser plate, distributing the light evenly to the whole surface. Point-like printing blocks part of the light, screening the light evenly like a sieve.

At the top of the diffusion plate, there will be 3~4 diffuser pieces, constantly uniform light to the whole surface, improve the uniformity of light, which is directly related to the LCD panel display effect. Professional LCD in order to better control the brightness uniformity of the screen, panel procurement, the later backlight control circuit, will make great efforts to ensure the quality of the panel.

Since the LCD substrate and the backlight system are not fixed by bonding, a metal or rubber frame is needed to be added to the outer layer to fix the LCD substrate and the backlight system.

After the period of the Module, the process is completed in LCM (LCDModule) factory, the core of this part of the basic does not involve the use of LCD manufacturing technology, mainly is some assembly work, so some machine panel factories such as chi mei, Korea department such as Samsung panel factory, all set with LCM factories in mainland China, Duan Mo group after the LCD panel assembly, so that we can convenient mainland area each big monitor procurement contract with LCD TV manufacturers, can reduce the human in the whole manufacturing and transportation costs.

However, neither Taiwan nor Korea has any intention to set up factories in mainland China for the LCD panel front and middle manufacturing process involving core technologies. Therefore, there is still a long way to go for China to have its own LCD panel industry.

TFT-LCD was invented in 1960 and successfully commercialized as a notebook computer panel in 1991 after continuous improvement, thus entering the TFT-LCD generation.

Simply put, the basic structure of the TFT-LCD panel is a layer of liquid crystal sandwiched between two glass substrates. The front TFT display panel is coated with a color filter, and the back TFT display panel is coated with a thin film transistor (TFT). When a voltage is applied to the transistor, the liquid crystal turns and light passes through the liquid crystal to create a pixel on the front panel. The backlight module is responsible for providing the light source after the TFT-Array panel. Color filters give each pigment a specific color. The combination of each different color pixel gives you an image of the front of the panel.

The TFT panel is composed of millions of TFT devices and ITO (In TI Oxide, a transparent conductive metal) regions arranged like a matrix, and the so-called Array refers to the region of millions of TFT devices arranged neatly, which is the panel display area. The figure below shows the structure of a TFT pixel.

No matter how the design of TFT display board changes or how the manufacturing process is simplified, its structure must have a TFT device and control liquid crystal region (if the light source is penetration-type LCD, the control liquid crystal region is ITO; but for reflective LCD, the metal with high reflection rate is used, such as Al).

The TFT device is a switch, whose function is to control the number of electrons flowing into the ITO region. When the number of electrons flowing into the ITO region reaches the desired value, the TFT device is turned off. At this time, the entire electrons are kept in the ITO region.

The figure above shows the time changes specified at each pixel point. G1 is continuously selected to be turned on by the driver IC from T1 to TN so that the source-driven IC charges TFT pixels on G1 in the order of D1, D2, and Dn. When TN +1, gATE-driven IC is selected G2 again, and source-driven IC is selected sequentially from D1.

The more vertical the Angle at which the LIQUID crystal stands, the more light will not be guided by the LIQUID crystal. Different liquid crystal standing angles will direct different amounts of light. From the above examples, the larger the angle at which the liquid crystal stands, the weaker the light that can be penetrated. (The direction of the upper and lower polarizer will determine the intensity of penetration, so as long as you understand the Angle of the liquid crystal standing will guide the intensity of light).

Undirected light is absorbed by the upper polarizer. Natural light is polarized in any direction. The function of the polarizer is to filter out most of the light oscillating in different directions and only allow light in a specific direction to pass through.

Many people don’t understand the differences between generations of TFT-LCD plants, but the principle is quite simple. The main difference between generations of plants is in the size of glass substrates, which are products cut from large glass substrates. Newer plants have larger glass substrates that can be cut to increase productivity and reduce costs, or to produce larger panels (such as TFT display LCD TV panels).

The TFT-LCD industry first emerged in Japan in the 1990s, when a process was designed and built in the country. The first-generation glass substrate is about 30 X 40 cm in size, about the size of a full-size magazine, and can be made into a 15-inch panel. By the time Acer Technology (which was later merged with Unioptronics to become AU Optronics) entered the industry in 1996, the technology had advanced to A 3.5 generation plant (G3.5) with glass substrate size of about 60 X 72 cm.Au Optronics has evolved to a sixth-generation factory (G6) process where the G6 glass substrate measures 150 X 185 cm, the size of a double bed. One G6 glass substrate can cut 30 15-inch panels, compared with the G3.5 which can cut 4 panels and G1 which can only cut one 15-inch panel, the production capacity of the sixth generation factory is enlarged, and the relative cost is reduced. In addition, the large size of the G6 glass substrate can be cut into large-sized panels, which can produce eight 32-inch LCD TV panels, increasing the diversity of panel applications. Therefore, the global TFT LCD manufacturers are all invested in the new generation of plant manufacturing technology.

The TRANSISTor-LCD is an acronym for thin-film TFT Display. Simply put, TFT-LCD panels can be seen as two glass substrates sandwiched between a layer of liquid crystal. The upper glass substrate is connected to a Color Filter, while the lower glass has transistors embedded in it. When the electric field changes through the transistor, the liquid crystal molecules deflect, so as to change the polarization of the light, and the polarizing film is used to determine the light and shade state of the Pixel. In addition, the upper glass is fitted to the color filter, so that each Pixel contains three colors of red, blue and green, which make up the image on the panel.

– The middle Cell is based on the glass substrate of the front segment Array, which is combined with the glass substrate of the color filter, and liquid crystal (LC) is injected between the two glass substrates.

The luminescence principle is tied to the vapor electroplating organic film between the transparent anode and the metal cathode. The electron and electric hole are injected, and the energy is converted into visible light by the composite between the organic film. And can match different organic materials, emit different colors of light, to achieve the requirements of the full-color display.

The organic light display can be divided into Passive Matrix (PMOLED) and Active Matrix (AMOLED) according to the driving mode. The so-called active driven OLED(AMOLED) can be visualized in the Thin Film Transistor (TFT) as a capacitor that stores signals to provide the ability to visualize the light in a grayscale.

Although the production cost and technical barriers of passive OLED are low, it is limited by the driving mode and the resolution cannot be improved. Therefore, the application product size is limited to about 5″, and the product will be limited to the market of low resolution and small size. For high precision and large picture, the active drive is mainly used. The so-called active drive is capacitive to store the signal, so when the scanning line is swept, the pixel can still maintain its original brightness. In the case of passive drive, only the pixels selected by the scan line are lit. Therefore, in an active-drive mode, OLED does not need to be driven to very high brightness, thus achieving better life performance and high resolution.OLED combined with TFT technology can realize active driving OLED, which can meet the current display market for the smoothness of screen playback, as well as higher and higher resolution requirements, fully display the above superior characteristics of OLED.

The technology to grow The TFT on the glass substrate can be amorphous Silicon (A-SI) manufacturing process and Low-Temperature Poly-Silicon (LTPS). The biggest difference between LTPS TFT and A-SI TFT is the difference between its electrical properties and the complicated manufacturing process. LTPS TFT has a higher carrier mobility rate, which means that TFT can provide more current, but its process is complicated.A-si TFT, on the other hand, although a-Si’s carrier movement rate is not as good as LTPS’s, it has a better competitive advantage in cost due to its simple and mature process.Au Optronics is the only company in the world that has successfully combined OLED with LTPS and A-SI TFT at the same time, making it a leader in active OLED technology.

Polysilicon is a silicon-based material about 0.1 to several um in size, composed of many silicon particles. In the semiconductor manufacturing industry, polysilicon should normally be treated by Low-Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition. If the annealing process is higher than 900C, this method is known as SPC. Solid Phase Deposition. However, this method does not work in the flat display industry because the maximum temperature of the glass is only 650C. Therefore, LTPS technology is specifically applied to the manufacture of flat displays.

Let me suppose that it belongs to the SPC method. However, compared with traditional SPC, this method can produce polysilicon at low temperatures (about 500~600 C). This is because the thin layer of metal is coated before the formation of crystallization, and the metal composition plays an active role in reducing crystallization.

This method is currently the most widely used. The Excimer laser is used for heating and melting A-SI. It contains low amounts of hydrogen and recrystallizes to Poly-film.

The LTPS membrane is much more complex than a-SI, yet the LTPS TFT is 100 times more mobile than A-SI TFT. And CMOS program can be carried out directly on a glass substrate. Here are some of the features that p-SI has over A-SI:

2. Vehicle for OLED: High mobility means that the OLED Device can provide a large driving current, so it is more suitable for an active OLED display substrate.

The “reflective” architecture USES an external light source to display the image via a reflector, which saves electricity but is harder to see in the absence of an external light source.

“Half penetration and half reflection” is the compromise between the two. The device USES a half mirror instead of the reflector, which can not only pass through the backlight but also use the reflection from the external light source to achieve the effect of saving electricity, increasing brightness, and reducing weight.

ODF process is an epoch-making manufacturing method, which is time-consuming, low yield, and difficult to achieve in the past. Such as the production of large panels of TV products, in response to the rapid response of small Gap panels, or advanced high-quality MVA panels, using ODF process technology, the problem can be readily solved.

using the ODF process, we no longer need a vacuum tempering process, LIQUID crystal injection machine, sealing machine, and panel cleaning equipment after sealing.

Generally speaking, in the ODF process, the use efficiency of a LIQUID crystal is more than 95%, but compared with 60% of the traditional process, it can fully save more than 35% of the cost of liquid crystal materials. It can also save water, electricity, gas, and lotion when cleaning sealant and related panels.

The manufacturing process saved is originally the most time-consuming and time-consuming process in the traditional manufacturing process. Moreover, with the trend of large-scale panels, or high-quality panels of small Cell Gap, the time will be longer. Traditionally, Cell processes take at least three days to complete, but ODF processes take less than one day.

Let us start with the basics first; refresh the knowledge about TN and LCD displays in general, later we will talk about TFTs (Thin Film Transistors), how they differ from regular monochrome LCD displays. Then we will go on to the ghosting effect, so we will not only discuss the technology behind the construction of the TFT, but also some phenomena, like the ghosting effect, or grayscale inversion, that are important to understand when using an LCD TFT display.

Next, we will look at different technologies of the TFT LCD displays like TN, IPS, VA, and of course about transmissive and transflective LCD displays, because TFT displays also can be transmissive and transflective. In the last part we will talk about backlight.

Let us start with a short review of the most basic liquid crystal cell, which is the TN (twisted nematic) display. On the picture above, we can see that the light can be transmit through the cell or blocked by the liquid crystal cell using voltage. If you want to learn more about monochrome LCD displays and the basics of LCD displays, follow this link.

What is a TFT LCD display and how it is different from a monochrome LCD display? TFT is called an active display. Active, means we have one or more transistors in every cell, in every pixel and in every subpixel. TFT stands for Thin Film Transistor, transistors that are very small and very thin and are built into the pixel, so they are not somewhere outside in a controller, but they are in the pixel itself. For example, in a 55-inch TV set, the TFT display contains millions of transistors in the pixels. We do not see them, because they are very small and hidden, if we zoom in, however, we can see them in every corner of each pixel, like on the picture below.

On the picture above we can see subpixels, that are basic RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colors and a black part, with the transistors and electronic circuits. We just need to know that we have pixels, and subpixels, and each subpixel has transistors. This makes the display active, and thus is called  the TFT display. TFT displays are usually color displays, but there are also monochrome TFT displays, that are active, and have transistors, but have no colors. The colors in the TFT LCD display are typically added by color filters on each subpixel. Usually the filters are RGB, but we also have RGBW (Red, Green, Blue, White) LCD displays with added subpixels without the filter (White) to make the display brighter.

What is interesting, the white part of the RGB and RGBW screen will look exactly the same from a distance, because the lights are mixed and generate white light, but when we come closer to the screen, we will not see white light at all.

Going a little bit deeper, into the TFT cell, there is a part inside well known to us from the monochrome LCD display Riverdi University lecture. We have a cell, liquid crystal, polarizers, an ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) layer for the electrodes, and additionally an electronic circuit. Usually, the electronic circuit consists of one transistor and some capacitors to sustain the pixel state when we switch the pixel OFF and ON. In a TFT LCD display the pixels are much more complicated because apart from building the liquid crystal part, we also need to build an electronic part.

That is why TFT LCD display technologies are very expensive to manufacture. If you are familiar with electronics, you know that the transistor is a kind of switch, and it allows us to switch the pixel ON and OFF. Because it is built into the pixel itself, it can be done very quickly and be very well controlled. We can control the exact state of every pixel not only the ON and OFF states, but also all the states in between. We can switch the light of the cells ON and OFF in several steps. Usually for TFT LCD displays it will be 8-bit steps per color, so we have 256 steps of brightness for every color, and every subpixel. Because we have three subpixels, we have a 24-bit color range, that means over 16 million combinations, we can, at least theoretically, show on our TFT LCD display over 16 million distinct colors using RGB pixels.

Now that we know how the TFT LCD display works, we can now learn some practical things one of which is LCD TFT ghosting. We know how the image is created, but what happens when we have the image on the screen for a prolonged time, and how to prevent it. In LCD displays we have something called LCD ghosting. We do not see it very often, but in some displays this phenomenon still exists.

If some elements of the picture i.e., your company logo is in the same place of the screen for a long period of time, for couple of weeks, months or a year, the crystals will memorize the state and later, when we change the image, we may see some ghosting of those elements. It really depends on many conditions like temperature and even the screen image that we display on the screen for longer periods of time. When you build your application, you can use some techniques to avoid it, like very rapid contrast change and of course to avoid the positioning the same image in the same position for a longer time.

You may have seen this phenomenon already as it is common in every display technology, and even companies like Apple put information on their websites, that users may encounter this phenomenon and how to fix it. It is called image ghosting or image persistence, and even Retina displays are not free of it.

Another issue present in TFT displays, especially TN LCD displays, is grayscale inversion. This is a phenomenon that changes the colors of the screen according to the viewing angle, and it is only one-sided. When buying a TFT LCD display, first we need to check what kind of technology it is. If it is an IPS display, like the Riverdi IPS display line, then we do not need to worry about the grayscale inversion because all the viewing angles will be the same and all of them will be very high, like 80, 85, or 89 degrees. But if you buy a more common or older display technology type, like the TN (twisted nematic) display, you need to think where it will be used, because one viewing angle will be out. It may be sometimes confusing, and you need to be careful as most factories define viewing direction of the screen and mistake this with the greyscale inversion side.

On the picture above, you can see further explanation of the grayscale inversion from Wikipedia. It says that some early panels and also nowadays TN displays, have grayscale inversion not necessary up-down, but it can be any angle, you need to check in the datasheet. The reason technologies like IPS (In-Plane Switching), used in the latest Riverdi displays, or VA, were developed, was to avoid this phenomenon. Also, we do not want to brag, but the Wikipedia definition references our website.

We know already that TN (twisted nematic) displays, suffer from grayscale inversion, which means the display has one viewing side, where the image color suddenly changes. It is tricky, and you need to be careful. On the picture above there is a part of the LCD TFT specification of a TN (twisted nematic) display, that has grayscale inversion, and if we go to this table, we can see the viewing angles. They are defined at 70, 70, 60 and 70 degrees, that is the maximum viewing angle, at which the user can see the image. Normally we may think that 70 degrees is better, so we will choose left and right side to be 70 degrees, and then up and down, and if we do not know the grayscale inversion phenomena, we may put our user on the bottom side which is also 70 degrees. The viewing direction will be then like a 6 o’clock direction, so we call it a 6 o’clock display. But you need to be careful! Looking at the specification, we can see that this display was defined as a 12 o’clock display, so it is best for it to be seen from a 12 o’clock direction. But we can find that the 12 o’clock has a lower viewing angle – 60 degrees. What does it mean? It means that on this side there will be no grayscale inversion. If we go to 40, 50, 60 degrees and even a little bit more, probably we will still see the image properly. Maybe with lower contrast, but the colors will not change. If we go from the bottom, from a 6 o’clock direction where we have the grayscale inversion, after 70 degrees or lower we will see a sudden color change, and of course this is something we want to avoid.

To summarize, when you buy older technology like TN and displays, which are still very popular, and Riverdi is selling them as well, you need to be careful where you put your display. If it is a handheld device, you will see the display from the bottom, but if you put it on a wall, you will see the display from the top, so you need to define it during the design phase, because later it is usually impossible or expensive to change the direction.

We will talk now about the other TFT technologies, that allow us to have wider viewing angles and more vivid colors. The most basic technology for monochrome and TFT LCD displays is twisted nematic (TN). As we already know, this kind of displays have a problem with grayscale inversion. On one side we have a higher retardation and will not get a clear image. That is why we have other technologies like VA (Vertical Alignment), where the liquid crystal is differently organized, and another variation of the TFT technology – IPS which is In-Plane Switching. The VA and IPS LCD displays do not have a problem with the viewing angles, you can see a clear image from all sides.

Nowadays all TV sets, tablets and of course mobile phones are IPS or VA. You can turn them around and see the image clear from all sides. But, for monitor applications the TN technology is still widely used, because the monitor usually is in front of you and most of the time you look directly at it, from top, left or right side, but very rarely from the bottom, so the grayscale inversion viewing angle can be placed there. This technology still is very practical because it is affordable and has some advantages for gamers because it is very fast.

Apart from the different organization of the liquid crystals, we also organize subpixels a little bit differently in a VA and IPS LCD displays. When we look closer at the TN display, we will just see the subpixels with color filters. If we look at the VA or IPS display they will have subpixels of subpixels. The subpixels are divided into smaller parts. In this way we can achieve even wider viewing angles and better colors for the user, but of course, it is more complicated and more expensive to do.

The picture above presents the TN display and grayscale inversion. For IPS or VA technology there is no such effect. The picture will be the same from all the sides we look so these technologies are popular where we need wide viewing angles, and TN is popular where we don’t need that, like in monitors. Other advantages of IPS LCD displays are they give accurate colors, and wide viewing angles. What is also important in practice, in our projects, is that the IPS LCD displays are less susceptible to mechanical force. When we apply mechanical force to the screen, and have an optically bonded touch screen, we push the display as well as squeeze the cells. When we have a TN display, every push on the cell changes the image suddenly, with the IPS LCD displays with in-plane switching, different liquid crystals organization, this effect is lesser. It is not completely removed but it is much less distinct. That is another reason IPS displays are very popular for smartphones, tablets, when we have the touchscreens usually optically bonded.

If we wanted to talk about disadvantages, there is a question mark over it, as some of them may be true, some of them do not rely on real cases, what kind of display, what kind of technology is it. Sometimes the IPS displays can have higher power consumption than others, in many cases however, not. They can be more expensive, but not necessarily. The new IPS panels can cost like TN panels, but IPS panels definitely have a longer response time. Again, it is not a rule, you can make IPS panels that are very fast, faster than TN panels, but if you want the fastest possible display, probably the TN panel will be the fastest. That is why the TN technology is still popular on the gaming market. Of course, you can find a lot of discussions on the internet, which technology is better, but it really depends on what you want to achieve.

Now, let us look at the backlight types. As we see here, on the picture above, we have four distinct types of backlight possible. The most common, 95 or 99 per cent of the TFT LCD displays on the market are the transmissive LCD display type, where we need the backlight from the back. If you remember from our Monochrome LCD Displays lecture, for transmissive LCD displays you need the backlight to be always on. If you switch the backlight off, you will not see anything. The same as for monochrome LCD displays, but less popular for TFT displays, we have the transflective LCD display type. They are not popular because usually for transflective TFT displays, the colors lack in brightness, and the displays are not very practical to use. You can see the screen, but the application is limited. Some transflective LCD displays are used by military, in applications where power consumption is paramount; where you can switch the backlight off and you agree to have lower image quality but still see the image. Power consumption and saving energy is most important in some kind of applications and you can use transflective LCD displays there. The reflective type of LCD displays are almost never used in TFT. There is one technology called Low Power Reflective Displays (LPRD) that is used in TFT but it is not popular. Lastly, we have a variation of reflective displays with frontlight, where we add frontlight to the reflective display and have the image even without external light.

Just a few words about Low Power Reflective Displays (LPRD). This kind of display uses environmental light, ambient light to reflect, and produce some colors. The colors are not perfect, not perfectly clear, but this technology is becoming increasingly popular because it allows to have color displays in battery powered applications. For example, a smartwatch would be a case for that technology, or an electrical bike or scooter, where we can not only have a standard monochrome LCD display but also a TFT LCD color display without the backlight; we can see the image even in

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strong sunlight and not need backlight at all. So, this kind of TFL LCD display technology is getting more and more popular when we have outdoor LCD displays and need a low power consumption.

On the picture above, we have some examples of how transmissive and reflective LCD displays work in the sunlight. If we have a simple image, like a black and white pattern, then on a transmissive LCD display, even with 1000 candela brightness, the image probably will be lower quality than for a reflective LCD display; if we have sunlight, we have very strong light reflections on the surface of the screen. We have talked about contrast in more detail in the lecture Sunlight Readable Displays. So, reflective LCD displays are a better solution for outdoor applications than transmissive LCD displays, where you need a really strong backlight, 1000 candela or more, to be really seen outdoors.

To show you how the backlight of LCD displays is built, we took the picture above. You can see the edge backlight there, where we have LEDs here on the small PCB on the edge, and we have a diffuser that distributes the light to the whole surface of LCD screen.

In addition to the backlight, we have something that is called a frontlight. It is similar to backlight, it also uses the LEDs to put the light into it, but the frontlight needs to be transparent as we have the display behind. On the example on the picture above we can see an e-paper display. The e-paper display is also a TFT display variation, but it is not LCD (liquid crystal), it is a different technology, but the back of the display is the same and it is reflective. The example you see is the Kindle 4 eBook reader. It uses an e-paper display and a frontlight as well, so you can read eBooks even during the night.

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Get rich colors, detailed images, and bright graphics from an LCD with a TFT screen. Our standard Displaytech TFT screens start at 1” through 7” in diagonal size and have a variety of display resolutions to select from. Displaytech TFT displays meet the needs for products within industrial, medical, and consumer applications.

TFT displays are LCD modules with thin-film transis