varitronix tft display factory

Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Displays use thin-film transistors to control the voltage applied to the liquid crystal layer at a sub-pixel level. The structure of TFT LCDs consists of a TFT “sandwich” and a BLU (Backlight Unit). A typical configuration is shown in the schematic diagram below.

Firstly, between the back and front polarizers, TFT LCD cells are made with two glass substrates – one for color filters, the other for a TFT array – and a liquid crystal layer sandwiched in between.

For normally black TFT LCDs, if we follow along a piece of light setting off from its backlight source, it will bea)guided uniformly by LGP;b)reflected and enhanced by BEF and DBEF;c)polarized by the back polarizer;d)polarization changed by twisted LC under the voltage applied by TFT arrays;e)“tinted” red/green/blue by corresponding color filter of the subpixel;f)let through the front polarizer by matched polarization; andg)finally, it will reach the surface and appears in viewer’s eyes.

For normally white panels, processd)will be the opposite – known as the polarization rotation effect, light is twisted in a voltage-off stage and can pass through the front polarizer by default, thus displaying white normally. However, when the voltage applied increases, this polarization rotation effect would be gradually diminished. And the light would not be able to pass through the front polarizer anymore without changing its polarization. In this way, certain pixels will appear in different colors.

Normally black LCDs have higher contrast and wider viewing angles without grayscale inversion phenomenon compared to their normally white relatives. And whether TFT LCDs are normally black or white depends on their LC switching mode:

2Chen, HW., Lee, JH., Lin, BY.et al.Liquid crystal display and organic light-emitting diode display: present status and future perspectives.Light Sci Appl7,17168 (2018).https://doi.org/10.1038/lsa.2017.168

As previously mentioned, TN mode functions with the polarization rotation effect. Under traditional TN/VA display mode, the liquid crystal molecules are vertically arranged, with a relatively narrow visual angle. When an external force is exerted on the screen, the liquid crystal molecular structure will sink in a herringbone pattern to slowly recover – a pattern called vertical alignment. Therefore, an evident “water ripple” usually appears when the display surface is touched and impacts the user experience. In comparison, the VA mode provides higher contrast. And MVA (multi-domain vertical alignment) is an upgraded version of VA with improved viewing angles.

Since the Company’s inception by a team of enterprising academics at the University of Hong Kong in 1978, Varitronix have grown to become one of the leading manufacturers of Liquid Crystal Displays through years of innovation in research, design, production scalability, and technology advancement.

Through the following years of finding local success, Varitronix envisioned a much larger scale operation for the ever-increasing demand for displays. The trajectory plan eventually led the Company to be officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1991 (HKSE code: 710), continuing its influence and strong presence to serve customers at the local, national, and global levels.

In 2016, BOE, an IoT company providing intelligent interface products and services for information interaction and human health, sought interest and became a major shareholder of Varitronix, which fueled the Company into the next great leap forward. BOE Varitronix, as the Company is now called, reflects purely on our integration leading to sustainable development in business, innovation technology, capital, and resource utilization.

Nearly half a century later, BOE Varitronix continues its time-honored tradition in providing the one stop shop for the latest display technologies, backed up by solid research and commitment to quality, customized to the individual needs, and delivered economically and efficiently.

BOE Varitronix Limited (BOEVx or the "Company”) formerly Varitronix International Limited is a Hong Kong-based investment holding company belongs to DAS BG (Devices and Sensors Business Group) mainly focusing on automotive display module business. BOEVx is the sole sales platform of BOE Group for automotive businesses.

BOE Varitronix Limited, the world’s leading manufacturer of TFT and passive display, established in 1978 by a group of academics who combined rigid R&D, innovative product designs and highly production efficiency to fulfill the utmost in customer satisfaction. BOEVx core businesses are automotive display and industrial display, the Company operates businesses in China, Korea, Japan, Europe and America and have established strategic partnership with certain sizable Tier 1 customer in the automotive industry. This is an important milestone for the Group to obtain further market shares and future business opportunities in various automotive-related areas.

BOE Varitronix Limited is listed on the Hong Kong Exchange (00710.HK) since 1991. In 2016, BOE Group became a major shareholder of BOE Varitronix, which turned BOE Varitronix into a new era. This integration led to sustainable development in business, innovation technology, capital and resource utilization.

The change of mobility behaviour of users will change and reshape the automotive and industrial industry. The mobility of the future will be much easier, more flexible and more individual for users. BOE Varitronix will continuous

BOE Varitronix, formerly a of a Hong Kong company focusing on R&D and manufacturing of automotive display and industrial display, has been established for more than 40 years. In 2016, BOE became the major shareholder of Varitronix.

As a leading manufacturer of small-to-medium-sized LCDs, BOE Varitronix offers complete solutions for a wide range of applications, from automotive and telecommunications, to industrial and consumer applications.

Monochrome display has been the core business for BOE Varitronix, who offer TFT LCD modules for electric meters, high-end white goods, home automation applications, consumer products and markets related to IoT, as well as medium-to-large sized monochrome displays aimed at high-end display markets.

BOE Varitronix is one of the world’s leading display solution providers for the automotive industry. The company’s strategy in the automotive display business is to continue growing market share in major automotive markets through the promotion and development of medium-to-large-sized standardized platform TFT module products.

BOE Varitronix has grown into a manufacturer with scalable production capacity, an extensive sales network and over 5,000 staff. The company’s major production bases expanded from Heyuan (Guangdong Province) to Chengdu (Sichuan Province)

Varitronix is addressing automotive dashboard and other control panel applications with a new mono TFT technology that enables advanced, attractive and informative consoles whilst avoiding the complex drive requirements of full colour TFT. Many automotive and industrial instrumentation projects have no requirement for full colour, making monochrome TFT an ideal high performance alternative to DSTN and other passive display technologies. Boasting ...

The display will have the high contrast ratio and graphics capabilities of an active LCD but without the complex and costly electronic drive circuit requirements of traditional colour TFTs.

According to Griffiths, a monochrome TFT is an attractive high performance alternative to instrumentation LCDs based traditional STN (super-twist nematic) and double-STN passive display technologies.

He believes the TFT’s higher contrast ratio, faster response time and wider viewing angle compared to passive LCDs will convince automotive manufacturers to adopt the newer technology.

“Contrast ratio can be 1000:1 and it offers the same performance characteristics as full colour TFT in terms of viewing angles and operating temperatures,” said Griffiths.

The key factor for the adoption of the technology in car dashboards is the three to one reduction the number of the integrated drive transistors in the TFT as the display operates in monochrome rather than the three colour graphics.

TAINAN, Taiwan, March 31, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Himax Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: HIMX) (“Himax”), a leading supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and other semiconductor products, and BOE Varitronix Limited (HKEX: 710) (“BOE Varitronix or BOEVx”), a world leading supplier of automotive display products, today announced they joined forces to secure a flexible AMOLED automotive display solution design-win with a leading new energy vehicle (“NEV”) maker. The solution has recently been applied to the customer’s upcoming launch of a flagship NEV model.

Himax and BOEVx partnered to offer the next generation flexible AMOLED automotive display in a 12.8-inch Center Information Display product (CID), adopting the Himax AMOLED driver IC and timing controller (TCON) solution. The AMOLED driver enables superior user visual enjoyment from a state-of-the-art OLED display from BOEVx with vivid and colorful image performance as well as modish panel curvature which benefits from the AMOLED panel and driver in COF technology. The Himax TCON supports dual-gate and MUX2 panel structure, 180-degree rotation with embedded color engine, along with an industry leading panel failure detection feature for passenger safety.

AMOLED displays have gained traction in various applications and are becoming the technology of choice for the high-end market as they provide better display quality and greater design flexibility. Himax’s flexible AMOLED display driver and TCON solution combined with BOEVx’s world-leading AMOLED display have been successfully adopted into the latest NEV model of major car makers.

Besides automotive flexible AMOLED solution, Himax also offers comprehensive automotive product portfolios for TFT-LCD displays, including in-cell TDDI, display driver, local dimming TCON, and high-speed P2P bridge IC. All have been broadly adopted, directly or indirectly, by automotive display module makers, including BOEVx, and Tier-1 automotive manufacturers and car brands placing Himax as the leading automotive driver supplier of the world.

In recent years, the smart vehicles industry has seen accelerating growth with all major global brands emphasizing more human-vehicle interaction upgrades, creating a trend towards large, personalized and super high resolution smart cockpit displays. Over the years, BOEVx has been promoting innovation in the field of smart cockpit display solutions, and is committed to providing car users with a more convenient, more comfortable and smarter driving experience. Currently, BOEVx has launched an S-shaped curved flexible AMOLED with 300mm in curvature and in triple-display form that is capable of displaying cluster information, center information as well as passenger entertainment content at the same time.

“Himax has been a long-term partner providing comprehensive automotive display solutions for BOEVx with leading specifications and professional service,” said Mr. Jack Su, Chief Executive Officer of BOEVx. “We are pleased to extend our deep cooperation and jointly develop the flexible AMOLED display solution in BOEVx’s next evolution display design.”

“The partnership with BOEVx allows us to promote Himax’s innovative automotive display solutions as well as nurture our leading-edge AMOLED technology,” said Mr. Jordan Wu, President and Chief Executive Officer of Himax. “We are delighted to further collaborate with BOEVx to launch advanced display solutions to the ever-growing car market, especially for NEV.”

Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: HIMX) is a fabless semiconductor solution provider dedicated to display imaging processing technologies. We are a worldwide market leader in display driver ICs and timing controllers used in TVs, laptops, monitors, smartphone, tablets, automotive, digital cameras, car navigation, virtual reality (VR) devices and many other consumer electronics devices. Additionally, we design and provide controllers for touch sensor displays, in-cell Touch and Display Driver Integration (TDDI) single-chip solutions, LED driver ICs, power management ICs, and LCOS micro-displays for augmented reality (AR) devices and head-up displays (HUD) for automotive. We also offer CMOS image sensors, wafer level optics for AR devices, 3D sensing and ultralow power smart sensing, which are used in a wide variety of applications such as smartphone, tablet, laptop, TV, PC camera, automobile, security, medical devices, home appliance and AIoT. Founded in 2001 and Himax currently employs around 2,000 people. Himax has 3,016 patents granted and 550 patents pending approval worldwide as of February 28, 2021. Himax has retained its position as the leading display imaging processing semiconductor solution provider to consumer electronics brands worldwide.

BOEVx (HKEX: 710) provides comprehensive and one-stop solutions and products, including the design, manufacturing and sales of automotive displays, industrial displays, home appliance application displays, and medical product displays. It combines rigorous research and development, innovative product design, flexible specifications and efficient production to maximize customer satisfaction. With focuses on automotive display business and continuously strengthens its own capabilities to become the world"s leading smart automotive display and solution provider, providing customers with one-stop services such as automotive integrated display system and smart automotive display system. Through its global sales network, the Company operates businesses in China, Europe, Korea, Japan, America and etc. With years of intensive cultivation of automotive display business and the trust of customers, it has become one of the leading automotive display suppliers and has established strategic cooperation with many well-known and NEV manufacturers. Based on strong foundation in display products and technologies, BOEVx continues to grow and aims to become a leading automotive cockpit display system solution provider.

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.

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.

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.

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.

LCD screens come in passive and active technologies, which are explained in this definition. For details about how liquid crystals work, see LCD subpixels for color screens and seven-segment display for monochrome.

Segmented characters (top) are used for small readouts, while the 5x7 matrix (middle) provides more character design flexibility. TVs, computer screens and mobiles use a matrix of thousands of rows and columns (bottom). In both active and passive methods, the matrix is addressed one row at a time for each frame. (Images courtesy of Ralph Sabroff of Varitronix, www.varitronix.com)

Passive displays are widely used with segmented digits and characters for small readouts in devices such as calculators, printers and remote controls, many of which are monochrome or have only a few colors. Passive monochrome and color graphics displays were used in the first laptops, and they are still used as an alternative to active matrix.

Passive matrix is less costly because transistors are used to activate rows and columns, not each subpixel, resulting in fewer manufacturing steps (see Active Matrix Displays below). However, passive matrix screens have a narrower viewing angle and suffer from "submarining," which is the disappearance of the cursor when moved quickly.

Passive displays are monochrome TN, STN and FSTN, and passive color displays are TN and FSTN. Active matrix displays are color TN. (Image courtesy of Ralph Sabroff of Varitronix, www.varitronix.com.)

Passive displays are created for custom applications. This ceiling fan readout uses segmented digits for temperature and custom elements for the lights.

Unlike passive matrix LCDs, active matrix displays have a transistor at each red, green and blue subpixel that keeps them at the desired intensity until that row is addressed in the next frame.

In the early days of laptops, active matrix cost a lot more than passive, and both types were offered. Today, color active matrix is the only type of LCD used in LCD/LED TVs, computer and LCD mobile screens. Also called a "thin film transistor LCD" (TFT LCD), a thin layer of transistors is deposited on the back of the screen (see amorphous silicon). Active matrix uses TN liquid crystals with a 90º twist. See bad pixel and LCD.

As a leading manufacturer of small-to-medium-sized LCDs, Varitronix offers complete solutions for a wide range of applications, from automotive and telecommunications, to industrial and consumer applications. Headquartered in Hong Kong, we serve customers around the world through an extensive service network - striving to achieve excellence through innovation, quality, respect and integrity.

Established in 1978 by a group of academics, Varitronix was one of Asia"s pioneers of LCD manufacturing. Since then, we have combined rigid RandD, innovative product designs, flexible specifications and efficient production to provide the utmost in customer satisfaction.

Varitronix went public in 1991, floating its shares on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. The move broadened our shareholder base, and increased management responsibility in looking after our public investors.

With a strong track record of profitability, Varitronix has grown into a manufacturer with scalable production capacity, an extensive sales network and over 4,000 staff. Our major production bases are located in Heyuan and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province. A number of branch offices located in Asia, North America and Europe perform sales and marketing functions.+ Read More