LCD Screens LCDs (liquid crystal display) are used in a wide range of products, from watches and digital clocks, to microwaves and laptop computers. Now what has made this technology so popular amongst consumers over the years , is the fact that they offer great advantages as compared to other display systems. Such as their lighter and thinner nature, as well as the ability to use less amounts of power. Now at first, the very name “liquid crystal” sounds a bit contradictory. How can any material be both a solid and a liquid? This is explained by the fact that the crystals in the LCD exist in a kind of a distinct middle ground between a solid form and liquid form, which gives them the movement and flexibility of a liquid, but can also let them remain in their place like a solid. So, technically they are not just one or the other. Furthermore, there are a large variety of liquid crystal substances, which can exist in many different phases, depending on the temperature and nature of that substance. The most important being the nematic phase, which is what makes LCDs possible. In the nematic phase, the liquid crystals are affected by electric currents, so in an LCD screen, those currents work at a microscopic level to control the amount of light that passes through the liquid crystal molecules that make up the moving layer of the screen, which is then placed in between clear glass panels. These currents also force the molecules (which are naturally twisted) to unwind or coil tighter, therefore changing the amount of light that can pass from the bulb behind the glass to the eye of the person looking through it. Most of the liquid crystal molecules are sort of rod shaped, and are categorized as either thermotropic or lyotropic. Thermotropic liquid crystal molecules react to changes in temperature or, even in some cases pressure. The reaction of lyotropic liquid crystals, which are mostly used to manufacture soaps and detergents, depend on the type of solvent they are mixed with.
Now, another form of LCD technology is the colored version. In a color LCD panel, each pixel is made up of three liquid crystal cells. Each of those three cells is fronted by a red, green, or blue filter, and it is the light passing through the filtered cells creates the colors that are seen on the LCD screen. Rarely, the device that sends the electrical current to one or more pixels could fail, and in those cases a completely dark screen would be shown. Nearly all modern color LCDs use a thin film transistor, known as an active matrix to activate each cell. Those LCDs create clear, sharp, and bright images. Older LCD technologies, were a lot slower, less efficient, and provided a lower contrast. The oldest of the matrix technologies, passive-matrix, offers sharp text but leaves distorted images on the screen when the display changes rapidly, making it less than ideal for things such as video.
Finally, due to the fact that LCDs address each pixel individually, they can create sharper text than CRTs (cathode ray tube), which when horribly focused can blur the unique pixels that make up the screen image. But the high contrast of LCDs can also cause problems when someone wants to display graphics. CRTs are great at softening the edges of graphics as well as text, and while it can sometimes make it hard to read text at very small resolutions, it also means CRTs can blend and enhance photography, better than LCDs. Also, LCDs have only one natural resolution, which is limited by the number of pixels built into the display. If one wants to move up in pixels on a LCD screen, one would have to complement it with software that will work only at that specific resolution.