342
4, DECEMBER 2007
Revolution of the TFT LCD Technology
C. T. Liu
Abstract—The introduction of flat panel displays that are fabri-
cated with thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT LCDs)
has changed human’s lifestyle very significantly. Traditionally,
the revolution of the TFT LCD technology has been presented by
the timeline of product introduction. Namely, it first started with
audio/video (AV) and notebook applications in the early 1990s, and
then began to replace cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) for monitor and
TV applications. Certainly, TFT LCDs will continue to expand in
all areas of our daily life in the future. Here a new concept of the
revolution of the TFT LCD technology is presented for the major
TFT LCD makers. In this new concept, there are four waves of
technology revolution with the following themes, respectively: 1)
product introduction; 2) performance enrichment; 3) power and
material utilization; and 4) functions for human interface. The
role of the LCD-TV in the revolution is also discussed.
I. INTRODUCTION
F OLLOWING the notebook application, thin-film transistor
liquid crystal displays (TFT LCDs) have successfully re-
placed the cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors in the late 1990s.
Starting in 2002, TFT LCDs have further taken the place of both
CRT and PDP displays in the TV segment. In addition, mo-
bile phones, DSC, PDA, cars, printers, ATM machines, digital
signage, and many more electronics products have introduced
TFT LCDs to bring higher added values to the consumers. In-
stead of the old concept that CRT TV replacement is the last
wave of TFT LCDs revolution, more potential applications of
TFT LCDs should be taken into account. Therefore, as we re-
search the TFT- LCD technology, a new concept is presented
here that “product introduction” would only be considered as
the first wave of the technology revolution. In this first wave,
the product introduction includes not only the notebook, mon-
itor, and TV, but also new applications, as shown in Fig. 1(a).
A huge amount of R&D resource has been spent on the en-
richment of the image quality and color representation since
2003 as we entered into the TV applications. Fig. 1(b) shows
the 2nd wave “performance enrichment”. While TV application
has been the driver for this second wave, the new techniques for
image and color improvement have also been adopted in AV,
notebook, and monitor products.
From 2002 to 2005, the performance of TFT LCDs has been
improved dramatically [1]–[4]. The specifications of the panels
have been constantly upgraded at least at a quarterly base. For
examples, brightness, contrast ratio, resolution, sharpness, color
saturation, response time, motion-picture quality. This is a result
of many fundamental research efforts including: 1) materials
Manuscript received December 27, 2006; revised May 10, 2007.
The author is with the Technology Center, AU Optronics Corporation,
Science-Based Industrial Park, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail:
ct.liu@auo.com).
Color versions of one or more figures are available online at http://ieeexplore.
ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JDT.2007.908348
1551-319X/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 3, NO.
Fig. 1. Four waves of TFT LCD technology resolution.
like liquid crystals, color pigments, polarizer films, and phos-
phors; 2) electronic designs like image processing, color man-
agement, driver ICs, and ASIC ICs; 3) micro-optics designs and
precision machinery designs; and 4) new processing technolo-
gies in the clean rooms where the size of the glass substrates
has increased from 300 mm by 400 mm in 1992 to 1950 mm by
2250 mm in 2006.
The third wave is “power and material utilization” as shown
in Fig. 1(c). Currently, a 32” TFT LCD TV burns almost 100
W of energy, but only less than 1 W reaches human eyes [9]. In
terms of material utilization, many components such as plastic
and metal frames that are duplicated on both the panels and the
system chases are not directly related to displaying the image.
In addition, there are 3 to 4 optical films or diffuser plates in
the current designs of the back-light units of the displays. The
optical films or plates are very expensive components. In the
future, these components will be integrated into one sheet which
will be fabricated with low-cost techniques.
It is very important to recognize that the third wave has three
meanings: 1) environmental designs to save natural resources
as well as for green consideration; 2) thin and light form factors
to promote more stylish products; and 3) cost saving to make
it more affordable. Therefore, in the next few years, the R&D
resource will shift to develop new materials, processing equip-
ment, designs, and components to improve the power and ma-
terial utilization for TFT LCDs.
The fourth wave of the technology revolution will be “func-
tions for human-interface.” As a general trend for electronics
products, more functions are expected by the consumers to im-
prove their life quality, communication network, entertainment
effects, and personal data access. Human interface for TFT
LCDs will gradually become indispensable specifictions for
new LCD panels. Therefore, the LCD panels will migrate from
an output device to a two-way communication device.
LIU: REVOLUTION OF THE TFT LCD TECHNOLOGY
Fig. 2. System blocks of a LCD-TV.
Fig. 3. Color reproduction diagram.
In this paper, recent results by AUO to enrich the LCD-TV’s
performance (the 2nd wave) will be presented. Furthermore,
studies for the third and fourth waves will also be discussed.
II. THE 2ND WAVE: PERFORMANCE ENRICHMENT
A. Image Processing and Color Management
The architecture for the LCD-TV signal processing is mainly
composed of two parts (Fig. 2). The first one (the front end)
deals with the audio and video signal processing provided by
343
TV system chip makers. The second block (the back end) pro-
vides driving signals to the LCD panels supported by the LCD
panel makers. For currently used LCD TVs, the signal source
includes signals from the broadcasting networks (antenna) and
signals from home recreational equipments such as CD and
DVD players. When the input source is VHF/UHF analog or
digital signals, it will be transformed onto the YCbCr standard
color space after demodulation and MPEG II decoding. Input
signals from digital equipment are also transformed to the
YCbCr color space. After transforming the signals to the same
344
Fig. 4. Image color gamut extension in the LCH.
color space, the TV controller chip will process the images and
send the output data to the LCD panels in the LVDS formats.
Inside the LCD panel, there is a timing controller (T-con) IC
to receive the LVDS signals. Based on each panel’s specific
optical characteristics and resolution, the T-con ICs generate
R/G/B image signals and synchronized clock trains to the
data-line drivers and the scan-line drivers. Besides, certain
functional blocks such as overdrive to improve the response
time of the liquid crystals (LC) are also added in the T-con
chips.
With the rapid growth of the LCD-TV market, the demand
for high image quality has become more and more urgent. Many
new driving techniques have been developed and implemented
in commercial products to meet such requirements.
For the TV controller chip, several key algorithms are inte-
grated to deal with image processing, including: 1) linear and
nonlinear scalar image process; 2) color enhancement; 3) skin
color correction; 4) 3-D noise reduction; 5) contrast enhance-
ment; 6) sharpness enhancement; (7) color matrix transforma-
tion etc. Color management for better picture quality is impor-
tant in particular. In Fig. 3, the color predetermination is pre-
cisely calculated by considering the spectra of all the optical
components within the panel including backlight unit, polarizer
films, LC, color filters and so on. In the u’-v’ color space, it is
now required to control the color variation to be smaller than
0.02. Also, in order to standardize the colors of different de-
vices (displays, printers, photos, projectors, etc.), the color co-
ordinates of red (R), green (G), and blue (B) are strictly defined
by the system makers. Without the accurate simulation of the
colors with precise spectra of the optical components, it is im-
possible to achieve those goals.
Color performance can be further improved by signal pro-
cessing. Traditionally, this is done on the x-y color chart, ne-
glecting the fact that it takes three domains to accurately repre-
sent colors. Although color enhancement has also been done in
JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 3, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2007
the L, C, H space (lightness, chroma, and hue), here we present a
new approach in this space. In Fig. 4, after outlining panel’s op-
tical characteristics and finding image gamma boundaries, hue
pages are chosen to decide color templates, and then the image
color gamut can be adjusted by selected chroma extension ratio
and lightness adjustment ratio within the same hue. Fig. 5(a)
demonstrates the result of the saturation enhancement.
Furthermore, color temperature correction is another key
technology to the picture quality. AUOptronics (AUO),Hsinchu,
Taiwan, R.O.C. successfully applied digital gamma value ad-
justment to correct the color temperature and skin color as
shown in Fig. 5(b). What is important here is to achieve a uni-
form color temperature for different greyscales, the so-called
color-tracking. If the color temperature varies for different
greyscales, the picture will look unnatural. For example, if the
face of a person is partially covered by shadows, the face has
areas of different brightness. The color temperature has to be
kept the same for those areas.
To improve picture quality, not only color management, but
also sharpness enhancement should be applied as well. Conven-
tionally, a linear gain function is used to enhance the sharpness.
As a result, there are halos or dark rings across the boundaries of
the objects on the screen. This is very common in most TVs. By
identifying the object boundaries, we can apply nonlinear gain
functions to avoid such pitfalls. Fig. 6 shows adjustable gain
function can be applied with AUO edge detector to make the pic-
ture vivid. In addition, one can selectively apply the sharpness
enhancement on the same screen. For example, the sharpness
enhancement can be automatically disabled on the text areas of
the screen.
B. Motion Picture Quality and Dynamic Contrast
To further improve the LCD’s optical performance, two
additional key technologies have also been developed in AUO:
1) impulse-type driving methods to improve motion-picture
LIU: REVOLUTION OF THE TFT LCD TECHNOLOGY
Fig. 5. Color management technologies. (a) Color saturation enhancement. (b)
Color temperature correction.
Fig. 6. Sharpness enhancement with edge detector and nonlinear gain func-
tions.
quality and 2) dynamic control of the backlight brightness to
increase the contrast ratio.
Fundamentally, because CRTs are impulse-type displays and
LCDs are hold-type displays, after-image is worse in LCDs than
it is in CRTs. This is particularly problematic in displaying mo-
tion pictures. Many efforts have been made to improve the mo-
tion picture performance of LCD TVs, including faster LC re-
sponse, overdriving signals, black-data insertion, and blinking
backlight [5]–[8]. Since the motion blur of LC panels can’t be
345
Fig. 7. Motion blur comparison.
diminished by fast LC response due to hold-type driving, im-
pulse-type driving techniques must be used to counteract the ef-
fect of eye-trace integration. Fig. 7 shows motion blur can be im-
proved by a faster LC response, but is still obvious even a 2-ms
LC has been applied. We have developed a new impulse-type
driving technology called simulated pulsed driving (SPD). The
technology can dramatically suppress motion blur to an accept-
able level for observers, as shown in Fig. 7.
As illustrated in Fig. 8, there are two synchronized elements
in the SPD technology. By applying new driving skills to in-
sert an additional black signal within each frame to simulate
pulsed driving without doubling the data frequency, BBSOD
(black band scanning overdriving), we can easily operate both
WXGA (1366X786) and Full HD (1920X1080) LCD TVs with
impulse-type driving. At the same time, to improve the imper-
fect pulse due to slow LC response and to operate the lamps ef-
fectively, PTB (pulsed tracking backlight) has been developed.
SPD includes both BBSOD and PTB technologies. It is now a
mature production technology for LCD TVs and monitors to
improve moving picture quality. As shown in Fig. 8, the MPRT
(moving picture response time) has been improved from the
conventional 16–8 ms.
Backlight modulation not only works for improving motion
blur as PTB, but also can enrich LCD TVs performance with
higher contrast ratio and lower power consumption. On the other
hand, a simple backlight modulation has certain drawbacks, e.g.,
loss of the peak brightness even though the overall power effi-
ciency is not compromised if it is corrected formulated, and en-
hanced flickers which can be minimized by adjusting the duty
ratio of the backlight modulation and other means. The latest
technology in AUO is the combination of image processing and
backlight modulation. The gamma setting can be dynamically
modulated, and adjust the determined local gray levels within
each frame once an image signal has been detected. As shown
in Fig. 9, with the modulated backlight output, brighter portions
of the image can receive more light to a higher gray level, and
the darker portions can be darker by both gray level and back-
light modulation at the same time. Consequently, the image de-
tails and contrast ratio are both enhanced, e.g., contrast ratio can
be increased from 1 500:1 to 3 000:1. Furthermore, since the
backlight unit is not always driven at the maximum power, the
power consumption of the TV set can be significantly reduced.
346 JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 3, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2007

Fig. 8. Mechanism and performance of SPD.

Fig. 9. Dynamicgamma and backlight modulation.

For typical motion-pictures, the average power saving is more

than 50%.
Besides the above technologies to improve the picture quality
of LCD TVs, new signal-interface such as HDMI is necessary to
enlarge the transmission bandwidth. High speed CPU and DDR
memory control should also be integrated in chips to deal with
large data rate. This is critical for HDTVs. On the other hand,
simplification of the system architectures and improvement of
the LCD performance will continue to be endless challenges for
LCD panel makers. For example, with the implementation of
gate-on-array (GOA) technology, the scan-line drivers can be
fabricated on glass. To reduce the number of data-line drivers,
shrinking the pin-pitch and increasing the pin-count can achieve Fig. 10. MVA color washout issue. (a) Normal view. (b) Oblique view.
the target. In reality, the data-line drivers of a 19-in monitor can
be reduced by 1/5 by shrinking the pin-pitch from 35 to 30 m Not only does it simplify the module process but also reduce the
and increasing the pin-count from 384 channels to 480 channels. component cost.
LIU: REVOLUTION OF THE TFT LCD TECHNOLOGY 347

Fig. 11. Intrinsic gamma distortion of MVA. (a) Oblique T-V curves of four VA-LC domains. (b) Comparisons of normal and oblique curves.

Fig. 12. Concept of AMVA technology.

C. LC Mode Development it has become essential even for monitor, notebook, AV, and
It used to be only for TV applications to keep the same op- mobile-phone applications. At large angles, the twisted-numetic
tical and color performance at large viewing angles. Nowadays, (TN) LC mode has several issues: low contrast ratio, color shift,
348
Fig. 13. (a) Gamma curves and (b) photographs comparisons between MVA
and AMVA.
grey-level inversion, and image washout. MVA (multi-domain
vertical alignment) LC mode was originally developed for LCD
TVs and high-end monitors with high contrast ratios and no gray
level inversion. In pixel layouts using the MVA LC mode, each
pixel is divided into 4 domains, each with a different LC orien-
tation. Thus, the optical and color performance become more
symmetric when viewed from different angles. However, the
conventional MVA mode still has noticeable color washout. As
LCD TVs demand better image and color quality, color perfor-
mance at large viewing angles was requested to be improved,
especially skin color washout issue as shown in Fig. 10(b). The
T-V curves of the 4 LC domains
within an MVA cell at a fixed oblique viewing angle
are plotted in Fig. 11(a). In Fig. 11(b), we compare the normal-
ized T-V and gamma curves for the normal and di-
rections. The distorted gamma curve at leads to pale
colors for the intermediate gray levels. Hence, MVA suffers in-
trinsic color-washout.
To suppress the gamma-curve distortion, we have developed
an advanced-MVA (AMVA) technology and successfully re-
duced the color-washout. Each LC domain in the MVA cell
is further divided into two sub-areas. Two different voltages
JOURNAL OF DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 3, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2007
Fig. 14. Analysis of LCD power consumptions.
Fig. 15. Mechanism of backlight and signal control.
are applied to keep two different LC polar angles. In effect,
AMVA is equipped with eight LC domains, as shown in Fig. 12.
In Fig. 13, AMVA shows smaller gamma distortion and better
color-washout performance in oblique angles.
III. THE THIRD WAVE: POWER AND MATERIAL UTILIZATION
The power consumption of an LCD panel is analyzed in
Fig. 14. No matter LED or CCFL backlight is considered, only
less than 1% of the input power reaches our eyes. In the ex-
ample in Fig. 14, if the input power is 100% (the left-end bar),
only 85% remains at the inverter output to drive the cold-cathode
fluorescent lamps (CCFL), and only 15.3% remains when the
electric power is converted to the optical power of the CCFLs.
At the right end of the figure, only less than 1% goes through the
front plate of the TFT LCD. The figure also shows similar num-
bers for the LED light source. Although LCD TVs already con-
sumes less power than CRT TVs, the above analysis shows that
dramatic improvement of power utilization is absolutely critical
for LCD TVs to save energy.
Backlight control is an effective way to save power. With the
point light source of LEDs, localized dimming control of back-
light can be realized. In Fig. 15, for different gray levels on dif-
ferent locations on the screen, we locally control the LED input
LIU: REVOLUTION OF THE TFT LCD TECHNOLOGY
Fig. 16. Image of backlight and signal control.
Fig. 17. Comparison of conventional and CF-less technology.
Fig. 18. Integrated and simplified construction.
power. This is achieved by characterizing the point-spread-func-
tions (PSF) of the LEDs in advance and using real-time al-
gorithms to superimpose the PSFs, as illustrated in the figure.
Fig. 16 shows a real case of 58% power saving. In addition, the
localized dimming control of the LEDs also raises the contrast
ratio to more than 10 000:1 in Fig. 16.
Color sequential is another effective technique to save power.
With red (R), green (G), and blue (B) LEDs as the light source,
each frame can be divided into three sub-frames for R, G, and B,
respectively. As a result, there is no need of color filters which
absorb at least 67% of the white light from CCFLs (see the trans-
mittance spectra in Fig. 3). In addition, the aperture ratio of the
pixels is also improved, which further increases the power effi-
ciency.
The color-sequential technology provides an additional ben-
efit of reducing the number of data-line drivers. Therefore, ma-
terial utilization is also improved. In Fig. 18, another example
of material saving is demonstrated. With the traditional back-
light power system, many components and a large-area PCB are
349
Fig. 19. Integratedtouch panel.
needed. By applying new TV inverter technologies, only much
fewer components and a slim PCB are necessary.
To further utilize the materials within a LCD panel. AUO
is developing new technologies with respect to electronics,
processing, and micro-optical designs, and precision-mechan-
ical stampers for injection formation. For examples, integrated
power systems, simplified structural designs, mask-reduction
for array and color filter processing, and inject printing tech-
nologies.
IV. THE FOURTH WAVE: FUNCTIONS FOR HUMAN INTERFACE
So far, LCD has acted only as an information output device.
In the future, we believe “human-interface functions” are in-
dispensable for new LCD panels. Touch panels are one kind
of information input device. Integrated touch panels are under
development with signal-sensing pixels without an additional
touch-pad attached on the LCD panel. In Fig. 19, a sensing unit
is built in the pixel array to receive the touch signals by the
changes of the incident light.
Functions for human interface can be divided into two cate-
gories, one requiring small data volume and the other huge data
volume. Typical examples for the first one range from touch bot-
toms for making selections to pen inputs for text editing and
drawings. The second category should include three domains:
1) 3-D drawings for animation; 2) voice recording and recogni-
tion; and 3) image capture and image processing. Therefore, it
needs both hardware and software technologies. The hardware
will be built inside the TFT arrays. The software will also re-
quire voice recognition and image processing.
In addition, human perception is critical for human interface.
This includes shapes, surface textures, colors, shadows, ingre-
dients, radiation, temperature etc. Currently, there are several
research organizations studying and building the database for
human perceptions. However, it is unrealistic to keep the data-
base and processing algorithms on each display device. Thus,
there will be new research efforts to extract key parameters from
350
the captured image and efforts to develop simplified algorithms
for image processing. Both can be implemented on the display
panels
V. CONCLUSION
The first wave will continue to introduce more products of
TFT LCDs beyond PC, TV, and mobile devices with the world-
wide expansion of capacities.
The second wave that quickly brings performance enrichment
for TFT LCDs will upsurge its momentum and push further the
growth of TFT LCDs.
The third wave calls for quantum leaps of power and material
efficiency that cover key components, panel designs, and system
integration.
The fourth wave will create new TFT-LCD markets for
two-way human-interface devices including vision, voice,
sensing, and writing.
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C. T. (Chun-Ting) Liu received the Ph.D. degree from the Electrical Engi-
neering Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, in 1990.
He then joined AT&T Bell Labs, working in several areas: nanometer silicon
devices for VLSI, high-speed compound semiconductor devices for telecommu-
nication systems, digital and RF circuit designs, and TFT-LCD flat-panel dis-
plays. After 12 years with Bell Labs, he joined AU Optronics, Hsinchu, Taiwan,
R.O.C., in 2002, to develop new display technologies for 1.5’’ to 65’’ TFT-
LCDs. He is currently the vice president and general manager for the Consumer
Product Operation Group of AU Optronics. He has published more than 100 pa-
pers, owned 25 U.S. patents, and delivered numerous invited talks. He has also
been the technical committee of several international conferences.