Liquid Crystal Display And Comparison between CRT & LCD & PLASMA

Liquid Crystal Display

A liquid crystal display (LCD) is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, video display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid (LCs). LCs does not emit light directly. They are used in a wide range of applications, including computer monitors, television, instrument panels, displays, signage, etc. They are common in consumer devices such as video players, gaming devices, clocks, watches, calculators, and telephones. LCDs have displaced cathode ray tube (CRT) displays in most applications. They are usually more compact, lightweight, portable, less expensive, and more reliable. They are available in a wider range of screen sizes than CRT and plasma displays, and since they do not use phosphors, they cannot suffer image burn-in. LCDs use only a fraction of the power required by CRTs. They are easier to read and more pleasant to work with for long periods of time than most ordinary video monitors. One should also now that there are several tradeoffs, such as limited view angel, brightness, and contrast, not to mention high manufacturing costs. As research continues, these limitations are slowly becoming less significant. Todays LCDs come mostly in two flavours passive and active. The less expensive passive matrix displays trade off picture quality, view angel, and response time with power requirements and manufacturing costs. Active matrix displays have superior picture quality and viewing characteristics, but need more power to run and are much more expensive to fabricate.

What is liquid crystal?

There are three common states of matter that we know about: solid, liquid and gas. Liquid crystal is a fourth "state" that certain kinds of matter can enter into under the right conditions. The molecules in solids exhibit both positional and orientation order, in other words the molecules are constrained to point only certain directions and to be only in certain positions with respect to each other. In liquids the molecules do not have any positional or orientation order, the direction the molecules point and positions are random.

Liquid Crystal Material:

The liquid crystal "phase" exists between the solid and liquid phase, the molecules in liquid crystal do not exhibit any positional order, but they do possess a certain degree of orientation order. The molecules do not all point the same direction all the time. They tend to point more in one direction over time than other directions. This direction is referred to as the director of the liquid crystal. The "amount" of order is measured by the order parameter of the liquid crystal.

Active matrix display:

Active matrix liquid crystal displays are standard on most new laptop computers. Two properties of liquid crystal is used as tiny switches to turn picture elements (pixels) off and on. Fist the crystals are transparent but can alter the orientation of polarized light Passing through them. Second, the alignment of their molecules (and their Polarization properties) is changed by applying an electric field. In a color display the liquid crystals are held between two glass plates or transparent plastics. These plates are usually manufactured with transparent electrodes, typically made of indium tin oxide that makes it possible to apply an electric field across small areas of the film of liquid crystal. The outsides are coated with polarizing filters. Only light with a perpendicular polarization can pass through these filters. (a). See figure 3.6 to the right. Inside the plates are transparent electrodes and color filters, which form very small picture element regions, called sub pixels. A grouping of a red, a green and a blue sub pixel defines the color that the pixel transmits. Fluorescent backlighting illuminates a display from the rear. In pixels that are off, light passes through the rear polarizing filter, the crystals (b) and the color filters, only to be blocked (absorbed) by the front polarizing filter. To the eye, these pixels appear dark. When a pixel is turned on, the liquid crystals reorient their position, and they in turn depolarize the light so that it can pass through the front polarizing filter (c).

The active matrix provides a superior method of electronically addressing (turning on) an array of pixels. For an image to appear on screen, one row of pixels receives the appropriate voltage. At the same time, software in the computer dictates that voltage be applied to those columns holding active sub pixels. Where an activated row and column intersect, a transistor turns on a sub pixel electrode, generating an electrical field that controls the orientation of the liquid crystal. This process repeats sequentially for each of the rows in figure 3.6 above, an advanced display, which can take 16 to 33 milliseconds.

Direct - Active Addressing:

In addition to the issues of display design concerning direct addressing there is a direct connection to every element in the display, which is good since we would have direct control over the pixels, but it is also bad because in large displays there could be thousands or even millions of pixels that would require separate connections. The method used in the vast majority of large modern displays is multiplexing. In this method, all the pixels across each row are connected together on the plate on one side of the liquid crystal film, and all the pixels in each column are connected on the opposite side. The rows are then "addressed" serially by setting all of the column voltages separately for each row low voltage selection ratios and, low contrast. A new method called active addressing has been developed to tackle this problem. In this scheme, several rows are addressed simultaneously in different patterns corresponding to orthogonal functions.

Passive matrix displays:

Perhaps the most common kind on the market today is the twisted nematic display. In this display, the liquid crystal molecules lie parallel to the glass plates, and the glass is specially treated so that the director of the crystal is forced to point a particular direction near one of the plates and perpendicular to that direction near the other plate. This forces the director to twist by 90 from the back to the front of the display, forming a helical structure similar to chiral nematic liquid crystals. Some chiral nematic crystal is added to make sure all of the twists go the same direction. This thin film of twisted nematic liquid crystal is circularly birefringent. When linearly polarized light passes through, the optical activity of the material causes the polarization of the light to rotate by a certain angle. The thickness of the film, typically around 6 or 8 micrometers, can be controlled to produce a rotation of the polarization of exactly 90 for visible light. Therefore, when the film is placed between crossed polarizer, this arrangement allows light to pass through. However, when an electric field is applied across the film, the director will want to align with the field. The crystal will lose its twisted structure and, consequently, its

circular birefringence. Therefore, linearly-polarized light entering the crystal will not have its polarization rotated (it is only rotated very slightly), so light will not be able to penetrate through the other polarizer. When the field is turned off, the crystal will relax back into its twisted structure and light will again be able to pass through. In some displays, the polarizer are parallel to each other, thus reversing the on and off states. If red, green, and blue colored filters are used on groups of 3 pixels, color displays can be created. The twisted nematic system coupled with multiplexed addressing is used in many of today's so-called passive matrix LCDs. Even though it is the most popular kind, it does have a number of disadvantages as well. First of all, the use of polarizer reduces the potential brightness because the optical activity and the polarizer are tuned to work best pass through. The effective viewing angle of the display can be very small since they allow less than half of the light incident on the display to only on light that is propagating perpendicular to the display. The voltage-brightness response curve is often not very sharp, leading to reduced contrast. The display is also affected by crosstalk where voltage meant for a certain pixel can leak through ``sneak paths'' to nearby pixels, causing a ghosting effect. And finally, switching speed of the liquid crystal is often not as high as might be desired--typically around 150 milliseconds. Lower switching speeds are necessary when doing multiplexing since one want the crystal to respond to voltages over the whole scanning cycle to reduce flicker, but such low speeds make passive matrix displays unusable for many applications (such as full motion video). The degree of multiplexing in twisted nematic displays has a huge influence on the contrast of the display. The liquid crystal will respond to the average voltage applied to it over a certain period of time, depending on its viscosity. Assuming the liquid crystal responds to voltages over one frame period, we can calculate the average voltage felt by a pixel that is on and a pixel that is off. A row gets a voltage of 1 if it is being addressed and 0 if it is not. During each row pulse, the column voltages are set according to which pixels in that row are on or off. If a certain pixel is on, it receives a column voltage of -1, otherwise it is 0.

Plasma Display Technology

A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display common to large TV displays (32 inches or larger). Many tiny cells between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture of noble gases. The gas in the cells is electrically turned into a plasma which then excites phosphors to emit light. Plasma displays should not be confused with LCDs, another lightweight flat screen display using different technology.

Composition of plasma display panel The xenon, neon, and argon gas in a plasma television is contained in hundreds of thousands of tiny cells positioned between two plates of glass. Long electrodes are also put together between the glass plates, in front of and behind the cells. The address electrodes sit behind the cells, along the rear glass plate. The transparent display electrodes, which are surrounded by an insulating dielectric material and covered by a magnesium oxide protective layer, are mounted in front of the cell, along the front glass plate. Control circuitry charges the electrodes that cross paths at a cell, creating a voltage difference between front and back and causing the gas to ionize and form a plasma. As the gas ions rush to the electrodes and collide, photons are emitted. In a monochrome plasma panel, the ionizing state can be maintained by applying a lowlevel voltage between all the horizontal and vertical electrodes even after the ionizing

voltage is removed. To erase a cell all voltage is removed from a pair of electrodes. This type of panel has inherent memory and does not use phosphors. A small amount of nitrogen is added to the neon to increase hysteresis. In color panels, the back of each cell is coated with a phosphor. The ultraviolet photons emitted by the plasma excite these phosphors to give off colored light. The operation of each cell is thus comparable to that of a fluorescent lamp. Every pixel is made up of three separate sub-pixel cells, each with different colored phosphors. One sub-pixel has a red light phosphor, one sub-pixel has a green light phosphor and one sub-pixel has a blue light phosphor. These colors blend together to create the overall color of the pixel, the same as a "triad" of a shadow-mask CRT or color LCD. By varying the pulses of current flowing through the different cells thousands of times per second, the control system can increase or decrease the intensity of each sub-pixel color to create billions of different combinations of red, green and blue. In this way, the control system can produce most of the visible colors. Plasma displays use the same phosphors as CRTs, which accounts for the extremely accurate color reproduction when viewing television or computer video images (which use an RGB color system designed for CRT display technology.)

Comparison between CRT & LCD & PLASMA

CRT:
Further information: Cathode ray tube

Pros:

High dynamic range (up to around 15,000:1),[1] excellent color, wide gamut and low black level. The color range of CRTs is unmatched by any display type except OLED. Can display natively in almost any resolution and refresh rate No input lag No ghosting and smearing artifacts during fast motion due to submillisecond response time, and impulse based operation. Near zero color, saturation, contrast or brightness distortion. Allows the use of light guns/pens Excellent viewing angle

Cons:

Large size and weight, especially for bigger screens (a 20-inch (51 cm) unit weighs about 50 lb (23 kg)) High power consumption Generates a considerable amount of heat when running Geometric distortion caused by variable beam travel distances Can suffer screen burn-in Produces noticeable flicker at low refresh rates. Apart from televisions, normally only produced in 4:3 aspect ratio (though some widescreen ones, notably Sony's FW900, do exist) Hazardous to repair/service Color displays cannot be made in sizes smaller than 7 inches (5 inches for monochrome). Maximum size is around 24 inches (for computer monitors; televisions run up to 60 inches).

LCD:
Further information: LCD and LCD TV

Pros:

Very compact and light Low power consumption No geometric distortion Little or no flicker depending on backlight technology Not affected by screen burn-in No high voltage or other hazards present during repair/service[citation needed] Can be made in almost any size or shape No theoretical resolution limit

Cons:

Limited viewing angle, causing color, saturation, contrast and brightness to vary, even within the intended viewing angle, by variations in posture. Bleeding and uneven backlighting in some monitors, causing brightness distortion, especially toward the edges. Smearing and ghosting artefacts during fast motion caused by slow response times (2-8 ms) and sample-and-hold operation. Only one native resolution. Displaying resolutions either requires a video scalar, lowering perceptual quality, or display at 1:1 pixel mapping, in which images will be physically too large or won't fill the whole screen.

Fixed bit depth, many cheaper LCDs are only able to display 262,000 colors. 8-bit S-IPS panels can display 16 million colors and have significantly better black level, but are expensive and have slower response time Input lag Dead pixels may occur either during manufacturing or through use. In a constant on situation, thermalization may occur, which is when only part of the screen has overheated and therefore looks discoloured compared to the rest of the screen. Not all LCD displays are designed to allow easy replacement of the backlight Cannot be used with light guns/pens

Plasma:
Further information: Plasma display

Pros:
High contrast ratios (10,000:1 or greater,) excellent color, and low black level. Virtually no response time Near zero color, saturation, contrast or brightness distortion. Excellent viewing angle. No geometric distortion. Softer and less blocky-looking picture than LCDs Highly scalable, with less weight gain per increase in size (from less than 30 in (76 cm) wide to the world's largest at 150 in (3.8 m)).

Cons:
Large pixel pitch, meaning either low resolution or a large screen. As such, color plasma displays are only produced in sizes over 32 inches (81 cm). Image flicker due to being phosphor-based Glass screen can induce glare and reflections High operating temperature and power consumption Only has one native resolution. Displaying other resolutions requires a video scalar, which degrades image quality at lower resolutions. Fixed bit depth. Plasma cells can only be on or off, resulting in a more limited color range than LCDs or CRTs. Can suffer image burn-in. This was a severe problem on early plasma displays, but much less on newer ones Cannot be used with light guns/pens Dead pixels are possible during manufacturing