Liquid Crystal Display is all about flat panel television technology. The technology of liquid crystal display has penetrated our everyday life in everyday things like wristwatches, mobile phones, calculators, computer monitors and high definition television. The use is growing rapidly and sales of LCD TV are expected to exceed 4 million in America alone.
There are some distinct advantages of LCD panels over other kinds of display technologies. They are slimmer and hardly go beyond 3.5“ in depth. These are lighter also and best of all they draw less power – only about 60% of the power consumed by plasma displays. LCD televisions do not spew electromagnetic waves that are harmful.
There are drawbacks of course – viewing angle is restricted, contrast ratio is limited and time of display response may cause concern. The biggest frown of all is caused by the price. Although it is falling but still it is considerably higher than its plasma counterpart.
LCD displays comprises mainly of sheets of polarized glass sheets – two in number. A liquid crystal solution is sandwiched between these. These liquid crystals are very specific that causes them to act as shutters that open or shut out entry of light as the need arises depending upon flow of electric current. This current passing through the liquid crystals is regulated by voltage that is applied between the glass sheets through the electrodes that are transparent. These form a network having rows on one direction of the panel and columns on the other side representing the pixels or picture elements.
What are these liquid crystals? Matter can be found in three states – solid, liquid and gas. Nevertheless there are substances that exist in a state that is neither liquid nor solid at any one point of time. The behaviour of these molecules is also peculiar. They keep to their orientation like those in a solid and yet they shuffle around taking up various positions like the molecules of a liquid. Thus these liquid crystals can be termed neither solid nor liquid though they have more of an affinity for the latter – that is the liquid state.
