JPH0478819A - Information output device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To reduce the size and weight of the device by providing a liquid crystal electooptical device packaged with a liquid crystal driver IC for applying an electric signal to a liquid crystal on either of substrates facing each other between a photosensitive drum and a light source. CONSTITUTION:The liquid crystal electrooptical device which includes the liquid crystal exhibiting a ferroelectric property in a liquid crystal cell provided with a 1st substrate consisting of one piece of electrode consisting of a light transparent conductive material and leads on a light transparent substrate (for example, a 1st substrate having an SiO2 film of 1,000Angstrom thickness on soda lime glass of 1.1mm thickness) and a 2nd substrate consisting of plural pieces of electrodes consisting of a light transparent conductive material and leads on a light transparent substrate, includes the liquid crystal having an ester bond in the main skeleton and has means for arraying the liquid crystal compsn. in a specified direction is provided between the photosensitive drum and the light source. Electric circuit parts for driving this liquid crystal are packaged with the driver IC 9 for applying the electric signal to the liquid crystal on the 2nd substrate 6 constituting the liquid crystal cell and the output terminals of the IC 9 and the electrodes 8 on the substrate are connected electrically on the substrate, by which the size and weight over the entire part of the device are reduced.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention is applicable to a printer that outputs information from a computer, word processor, etc., an output portion of a facsimile,
The purpose of the present invention is to propose a method for improving a device used in the printing part of a copy machine.

[Conventional technology]

Conventional information output devices are of the thermal head type, in which a print head with resistance heating parts arranged in a line or matrix shape is brought into contact with thermal paper and thermally altered to transfer dots and output characters and figures. Also, is there a type of device that places a heat source in close contact with a part of a container filled with ink to instantaneously boil some of the ink inside, and then sprays the ink from a nozzle attached to the container onto the paper that is being transferred? has been made into

Furthermore, as a method using a photosensitive drum, a system has been realized in which the output light of a semiconductor laser is point-irradiated onto the drum by rotating a Coriolis mirror, and characters and figures are output by continuous operation.

Using a line-shaped liquid crystal cell of the guest-host type, the light from the backlight of a fluorescent lamp is used as line head information to irradiate a line onto a photosensitive drum, and the continuous operation outputs characters and figures.

In recent years, a method has also been proposed in which a ferroelectric liquid crystal cell is used instead of this guest-host type liquid crystal cell.

[The problem that the invention attempts to solve]

The thermal head and inkjet method described in the conventional technology section have a printing speed of 6000 yen per second due to the limit of response speed.
It has the disadvantage that it can only be raised to the text layer. Furthermore, in an information output device using a semiconductor laser, a Coriolis mirror is used to irradiate a point light source onto a 400 mm long photosensitive drum, so the overall size of the device must be increased to ensure the optical path length. This made it unsuitable for miniaturization.

An information output device using a guest-host liquid crystal cell is compact, but the response speed of the liquid crystal is slow at several tens of m5ec, and a new method using a ferroelectric liquid crystal cell has been proposed.

However, in a liquid crystal device using such a ferroelectric liquid crystal, it is naturally required that the drive characteristics be uniform throughout the device. To this end, technology has been developed with the aim of forming a defect-free and uniform liquid crystal phase, ie, a monodomain, over the entire liquid crystal device.

However, liquid crystal materials, especially ferroelectric liquid crystals with a smectic layer structure, are subject to various problems such as minute scratches on the alignment film, irregularities in the electrodes for driving the liquid crystal, spacers used to maintain a constant distance between the substrates of the liquid crystal device, etc. Due to this, defects occur in the layer structure, making it impossible to obtain uniform monodomains.For this reason, conventionally, monodomains are grown over the entire cell by one-dimensional crystal growth (temperature gradient) from the edge of the liquid crystal device. There was an attempt to make him do it.

However, this method was not applicable when the length of the liquid crystal device became long. That is, the size of the monodomain realized by this method is at most several tens of millimeters square, and it has been impossible to make it long and use it industrially.

Furthermore, even if a monodomain of a usable size is realized, the property of ferroelectric liquid crystal material is that it will not be aligned parallel to the liquid crystal material or the substrate, but will be aligned with a certain inclination. The layered structure may be bent or broken. If there are many such bent layer structures, if the curved peaks or valleys are opposed, a zigzag defect will occur in that part, causing non-uniformity in display performance and drive characteristics. there were.

When the liquid crystal material changes its possible state due to an external electric field, a phenomenon is observed in which the process of reversal or reverse occurs with this zigzag defect as the boundary. For this reason, there was a problem in that uniform drive characteristics could not be obtained throughout the device.

Furthermore, when a liquid crystal electro-optical device is used as an optical shutter for an information output device, an electric circuit is required to drive the liquid crystal, and this driving circuit may be larger than a portion of the optical shutter in some cases. It was put away.

Therefore, there was a desire for an optical shutter that included this drive circuit to be smaller and lighter.

[Means to solve the problem]

Transparent substrate (for example, a first substrate having a 1000-layer thick SiO2 film on 1.1 mm thick soda lime glass)
A first substrate comprising one electrode and a lead made of a light-transmitting conductive material, and a second substrate comprising a plurality of electrodes and leads made of a light-transmitting conductive material on the light-transmitting substrate. A means for arranging a liquid crystal composition in a certain direction, including a liquid crystal exhibiting ferroelectricity and a liquid crystal composition having an ester bond in its main skeleton, is provided inside a liquid crystal cell in which substrates are arranged in parallel positions. A liquid crystal electro-optical device is provided between the photosensitive drum and the light source. At this time, the electric circuit part that drives this liquid crystal is implemented by mounting a driver IC for applying an electric field signal to the liquid crystal on the second substrate constituting the liquid crystal cell mentioned above, and connecting the output terminal of the IC with the driver IC on the same substrate. The device is characterized by being made smaller and lighter by electrically connecting the electrodes on the substrate.

Furthermore, by including a liquid crystal composition containing an ester bond in the main skeleton, a multi-domain state can be created, so that the alignment distortion of the liquid crystal is caused by the boundaries of the domain.
Because of the relaxation, no large alignment defects occur, and no zigzag defects or the like occur in the entire liquid crystal cell.

Furthermore, since the inside of this microdomain is in a good monodomain state, there is no difference in the display or drive of the liquid crystal in each microdomain, and the device as a whole can achieve uniform display or drive characteristics. It is something that can be done.

Examples are shown below.

〔Example〕

FIG. 1 shows a schematic cross-sectional view of a cell of a liquid crystal device used in this example. Further, FIG. 2 shows a configuration diagram of the information output device. Since both figures are schematic diagrams, their dimensions are arbitrary.

In this example, as the first substrate (1), a 1000% SiO□ film was formed by sputtering on soda lime glass (1.1 mm thick) in order to block the precipitation of alkali ions in the glass substrate. I used 6 things that people had. A transparent conductive film (2) (IT○; indium tin oxide) was formed on the first substrate (1) by sputtering.
We set up 100 people. Thereafter, one electrode, an external lead electrode, and a lead were formed using a photolithography method.

As the second substrate (6), in this example, a 6 substrate having 1000 SlO□ films on sortalime glass (1.1 mm thick) was used. 1,100 light-transmitting conductive films (5) were provided on the second substrate. Thereafter, 4,800 printed electrodes, external electrodes, and leads were formed using a photolithography method. The pitch of these printed electrodes was 62.5 microns.

In addition, 5,000 nickel plating (7) and 500 gold plating (8) were applied to the leads and extraction electrodes.

A polyimide film (3) was printed on the first substrate by an offset method and baked for 10 minutes in a far-infrared oven at 350°C to obtain an alignment film (3) for 1000 people. Thereafter, rubbing was performed using a rubbing device in which a Chargenon cloth (manufactured by Fuikasei Co., Ltd.) was wound around a roll to create fine scratches in a certain direction on the alignment film.

A mixture of 5% by weight of cylindrical SiO□ fibers having a diameter of 2.2 μm in a one-component epoxy resin was printed on the first substrate using a screen method.

Thereafter, after bonding the first substrate and the second substrate, a liquid crystal exhibiting 7 ferroelectric properties (SELT500) was injected using a vacuum method. A liquid crystal cell was created by sealing the injection port with an ultraviolet curing resin.

After that, a gold bump of 100 microns square and 20 microns in height was installed on the output terminal of the driver IC (9), which is a multiplexer that shifts 8-bit data from the controller, and an external electrode (8) on the second substrate. A liquid crystal device was fabricated by electrically contacting the IC surface and the second substrate, and connecting and fixing the IC surface and the second substrate with epoxy resin (1υ).

This liquid crystal device was installed between a light source in which LEDs were arranged on a line and a photosensitive drum to constitute an information output device.

The liquid crystal cell of the present invention has an LED light source (21) as (22).
) and the photoreceptor drum (23), and two deflection plates (not shown) are provided to function as a shutter that transmits or blocks light depending on an input signal.

In the case of this embodiment, 4,800 lights of the ■ line are turned on.

We were able to perform good ON/OFF control of the light for 4,800 of them. This may be due to the orientation of the liquid crystal in the liquid crystal cell or the multi-domain state, and the light could be turned on and off uniformly in almost all parts.

In addition, since there are minute alignment defects on the entire surface of the liquid crystal cell, there are no large alignment defects, and the light can be turned on or off.
I couldn't see any parts that were different from other parts.

In addition, since a ferroelectric liquid crystal material is used as the liquid crystal material, the response speed is 2 to 10 times or more compared to conventional liquid crystals, which is the output speed of an A4 size standard document or more than twice that of conventional devices. I was able to do that.

Since the IC for driving the liquid crystal is mounted on the substrate that makes up the liquid crystal cell, its volume can be reduced to about 2/3 to 1/2 of that of conventional products, and the number of parts used has also been reduced. Therefore, the number of manufacturing steps was reduced, leading to cost reductions.

〔effect〕

According to the present invention, by performing multi-domain alignment on a liquid crystal cell in an information output device, it was possible to obtain a uniform alignment state over the entire liquid crystal cell.

Uniform display characteristics and a high contrast ratio were achieved without the occurrence of defects such as zigzag defects that have a large optical effect.

Particularly in liquid crystal devices used in information output devices, high contrast is required, and the present invention has made it possible to improve the characteristics.

Furthermore, by mounting the driver IC on the second board, it has become possible to reduce the weight by 70% and the external size by 60% compared to conventional equipment that uses FPC and packaged ICs.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 shows a cross-sectional view of the liquid crystal device used in the present invention. FIG. 2 shows a sectional view of the information output device used in the present invention.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. Inside a liquid crystal cell, a first substrate having one light-transmitting electrode and a lead and a second substrate having a plurality of light-transmitting electrodes and leads are provided at opposing positions. A liquid crystal electro-optical device, in which a liquid crystal composition containing a liquid crystal exhibiting ferroelectricity and a liquid crystal driver IC for applying an electric field signal to the liquid crystal is mounted on one of the opposing substrates, is mounted between the photosensitive drum and the light source. An information output device characterized by being provided with. 2. An information output device according to claim 1, characterized in that the liquid crystal composition includes a liquid crystal composition having an ester bond in its main skeleton.