JPH09258269A - Liquid crystal display device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a liquid crystal display device with a wide view angle, without gradation inversion at all, capable of multi-level displaying and with a high numerical aperture by constituting the device so that initial oriented direction of liquid crystal molecules is one direction, and plural driving direction of the liquid crystal molecules are provided in one pixel. SOLUTION: In the liquid crystal display device provided with a group of pixel electrodes 2 in matrix formed so that electric field applied to a liquid crystal layer becomes nearly parallel to a substrate surface, an active element and a prescribed drive means, the initial oriented direction of the liquid crystal is made one direction, and plural driving directions of the liquid crystal exist in one pixel. For instance, when the pixel electrode 2 and a common electrode 3 are constituted of a bent structure, two electric field directions 7 exist in the pixel. The liquid crystal molecule arranged along the initial oriented direction 6 of the liquid crystal molecule whose rotational directions are changed respectively by two electric field directions, and face to two up and down vertical directions such as the liquid crystal molecule 8 when electric field is applied, and thus, since the characteristic optical characteristics of two directions is averaged, the gradation inversion is eliminated.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

[0001] The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art (In the conventional liquid crystal display device, the electrodes for driving the liquid crystal layer use transparent electrodes facing each other, which are formed on two substrates. This is because a display system typified by a twisted nematic display system, which operates by making the direction almost perpendicular to the substrate surface, is adopted. A method using a pair of comb-teeth electrodes as a method of making the electrodes substantially parallel to each other has been proposed by, for example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 63-21907, USP4345249, WO91 / 10936, JP-A-6-222397, and JP-A-6-160878. There is. In this case the electrodes need not be transparent,
An opaque metal electrode having high conductivity is used. The display method (hereinafter, referred to as a lateral electric field method) in which the direction of the electric field applied to the liquid crystal is substantially parallel to the substrate surface in these known techniques has an extremely wide viewing angle as compared with a conventional liquid crystal display device. .

[0003]

In the above-mentioned horizontal electric field type liquid crystal display device, a display is performed by applying an electric field in a direction substantially parallel to the substrate to the liquid crystal and rotating the liquid crystal within the plane of the substrate. Therefore, even if the viewing angle direction is changed, the apparent Δn · d of the liquid crystal layer does not change so much, and an extremely wide viewing angle can be obtained as compared with the conventional longitudinal electric field (TN) method. However, it has been found that even in the horizontal electric field type liquid crystal display device, there is a viewing angle range in which gradation inversion occurs. The angle is related to the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules in white display, and gradation inversion occurs at the angle at which the major axis of the liquid crystal molecules is oriented. An object of the present invention is to solve this problem without increasing the number of rubbing processes and the like so that grayscale inversion does not occur.

[0004]

(Means for Solving the Problems) (As a result of intensive studies by the inventors for solving the above problems and achieving the above objects, they have found that the above objects can be achieved by the following means.) Scan signal electrode, A video signal electrode, a pixel electrode, a reference electrode, and an active element are formed on a substrate, and an alignment film of liquid crystal is formed on the electrode group directly or through an insulating layer on the electrode group. The liquid crystal layer is sandwiched between the two substrates, the liquid crystal layer being sandwiched between the two substrates (the electrode group is configured to apply an electric field to the liquid crystal layer substantially parallel to the substrate). In the provided liquid crystal display device, the initial alignment direction of the liquid crystal molecules is one direction, and one pixel has a plurality of driving directions of the liquid crystal molecules.

FIG. 1 shows a schematic view of an example of the liquid crystal display device of the present invention. When the pixel electrode 2 and the common electrode 3 have a bent structure as shown in the figure, there are two electric field directions 7 in the pixel. The liquid crystal molecules aligned along the initial alignment direction 6 of the liquid crystal molecules have different rotation directions depending on the two electric field directions, and face the two vertical directions like the liquid crystal molecules 8 when the electric field is applied. As described above, the direction in which gradation inversion tends to occur is the major axis direction of the liquid crystal molecules, but if there are two liquid crystal molecule orientations in one pixel in this way, the optical characteristics of the two orientations are averaged. It is considered that the gradation inversion disappeared because of the different characteristics.

Several electrode structures are conceivable for manufacturing such a liquid crystal display device, but it can be easily manufactured by using a pixel electrode and a common electrode having a bent structure as shown in FIG. . It can also be achieved by making the pixel electrode and the common electrode non-parallel. The angle of the bent portion is not particularly limited, but if the angle is 120 degrees or more and 180 degrees or less, the bending of the pixel is not visible to the naked eye, and is more preferable. If the angle formed by the electrodes and the rubbing direction is small, the voltage-transmittance characteristic of the liquid crystal element becomes too steep, which makes it impossible to perform multi-gradation display. This problem,
This can be solved by setting the distance between electrodes to be two or more in a pixel. The voltage-transmittance characteristic of the lateral electric field method can change its threshold voltage depending on the distance between the electrodes. Therefore, if there are two or more distances between the electrodes, the voltage-transmittance characteristic of one pixel becomes an average of the voltage-transmittance characteristics at each distance between the electrodes, and the voltage-transmittance characteristic becomes gentle and multi-gradation display is performed. Is possible. In addition, as shown in FIG. 1, if only the pixel electrode and the common electrode are bent, the areas of the image signal electrode and the common electrode at both ends of the pixel that are not related to the display become large and the aperture ratio becomes low.
This problem can be solved by making the image signal electrode or the scanning signal electrode also have a similar bent structure.

[0007]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

[Embodiment 1] FIG. 2 is a view showing the structure of various electrodes in a unit pixel of the present invention. The scanning signal electrode 4 is formed on a polished glass substrate, and the surface of the scanning signal electrode is A
It was covered with an alumina film which was an anodic oxide film of 1. SiN (gate S that becomes a gate insulating film so as to cover the scanning signal electrode)
An iN) film and an amorphous Si (a-Si) film are formed.
An n-type a-Si film, a pixel electrode 2 and an image signal electrode 1 were formed on the -Si film. Further, the common electrode 3 was formed in the same layer as the pixel electrode and the image signal electrode. The structure of the pixel electrode and the image signal electrode is parallel to the common electrode having a bent structure as shown in FIG. 2 and intersects with the scanning signal electrode, and the transistor element and the metal electrode group are formed on one substrate. Been formed. The angle of the bent portions of the pixel electrode and the common electrode was the same, and was 170 degrees. Also,
The distance between the pixel electrode and the common electrode was the same in each pixel and was set to 30 μm. As a result, an electric field is applied between the pixel electrode and the common electrode on one of the substrates, and the direction thereof is made substantially parallel to the substrate surface. The substrate-shaped electrodes are all made of aluminum, but the material is not particularly limited as long as it is made of a metal having a low electric resistance, and chromium, copper, or the like may be used. The number of pixels is 640 (X3) X480, and the pixel pitch is 100 μm in the horizontal direction (that is, between the common electrodes) and 300 μm in the vertical direction (that is, between the scanning signal electrodes). In addition, stripe-shaped color filters of R, G, and B colors are provided on the substrate opposite to the substrate having the transistor element. A transparent resin for flattening the surface was laminated on the color filter. An epoxy resin was used as the material of the transparent resin. Further, a polyimide-based alignment film was applied on this transparent resin.
A drive LSI is connected to the panel as shown in FIG. 3, a scanning signal supply circuit 9 and an image signal supply circuit 10 are connected on the TFT substrate, and a scanning signal voltage, a video signal voltage, and a timing signal are supplied from the image information signal source 11. Supply and active matrix drive.

On the other hand, the rubbing directions on the upper and lower substrates were substantially parallel to each other and parallel to the image signal electrodes. The gap is 4.0 μ in a liquid crystal filled state, with spherical polymer beads dispersed and sandwiched between the substrates so as to have a dispersion density of 100 / mm ^2.
m. Two polarizing plates (G1220DU manufactured by Nitto Denko Corporation)
The panel was sandwiched by, and the polarization transmission axis of one polarizing plate was made substantially parallel to the rubbing direction, and the other was made orthogonal to it. As a result, normally closed characteristics were obtained. A liquid crystal having a positive dielectric anisotropy Δε and containing a compound having three fluoro groups at the ends as main components was sandwiched between the substrates. 2,2-for the alignment film
A polyimide alignment film composed of bis [4- (p-aminophenoxy) phenylpropane] and pyromellitic hydrate was used. The alignment film is not limited to this material, and various polyimide films can be used. The viewing angle characteristics of the panel manufactured in this way are shown in the LCD.
Viewing angle characteristic tester (Hamamatsu Photonics KK, C57
18) was used to evaluate the elevation angle within ± 60 degrees. Gradation is 8
Gradation was performed, and the viewing angle dependence of luminance at each gradation voltage was measured. As a result, gradation inversion did not occur at all angles in the manufactured panel.

[Embodiment 2] FIG. 4 is a view showing the structure of various electrodes in a unit pixel according to a second embodiment of the present invention. A liquid crystal display device was produced in the same manner as in Example 1 except that the shapes of the pixel electrode and the common electrode were changed as shown in FIG. 4 and the distance between the pixel electrode and the common electrode was 15 μm. When the viewing angle characteristics were measured in the same manner as in Example 1, gradation inversion did not occur at all angles.

[Example 3] A liquid crystal display device was produced in the same manner as in Example 1 except that the angle of the bent portion of the pixel electrode and the common electrode was 178 degrees. When the viewing angle characteristics were measured in the same manner as in Example 1, gradation inversion did not occur at all angles. Further, the voltage-transmittance characteristics were measured, and the voltage at which the transmittance was maximized and the voltage at which the transmittance was 1% of the maximum transmittance were calculated. As a result, they were 2.5 V and 1.5 V, respectively. The difference was 1.0 V, which was very small.

[Embodiment 4] FIG. 5 is a view showing the structure of various electrodes in a unit pixel according to a third embodiment of the present invention. The shapes of the image signal electrode, the scanning signal electrode, the pixel electrode, and the common electrode were changed as shown in FIG. 5, and the angle of the bent portion of the image signal electrode, the pixel electrode, and the common electrode was 170 degrees, and the second example. Similarly, a liquid crystal display device was manufactured. As shown in FIG. 5, since the image signal electrode has a bent structure like the pixel electrode and the common electrode, the aperture ratio is about 1.13 times that of the second embodiment. When the viewing angle characteristics were measured in the same manner as in Example 1, gradation inversion did not occur at all angles.

[Embodiment 5] FIG. 6 is a view showing the structure of various electrodes in a unit pixel according to a fourth embodiment of the present invention. There are two distances between the pixel electrode and the common electrode within the pixel.
A liquid crystal display device was produced in the same manner as in Example 3 except that the thickness was 10 μm and 10 μm. When the viewing angle characteristics were measured in the same manner as in Example 1, gradation inversion did not occur at all angles. In addition, the voltage-transmittance characteristics were measured, and the voltage at which the transmittance was maximum and the voltage at which the transmittance was 1% of the maximum transmittance were calculated. As a result, they were 3.4 V and 1.0 V, respectively. The difference was 2.4 V, which was sufficiently large and was a voltage difference capable of displaying multiple gradations.

[Comparative Example 1] FIG. 7 is a view showing the structure of various electrodes in a unit pixel of the first comparative example of the present invention. A liquid crystal display device was manufactured in the same manner as in Example 2 except that the pixel electrode and the common electrode had a linear structure and the rubbing angle was 15 degrees with respect to the image signal electrode. When the viewing angle characteristics were measured in the same manner as in Example 1, it was found to be 45 for all image signal electrodes.
Gradient reversal occurred at an angle of elevation of 45 degrees or more.

[Sixth Embodiment] FIG. 8 is a view showing the structure of various electrodes in a unit pixel according to a fifth embodiment of the present invention. A liquid crystal display device was prepared in the same manner as in Example 2 except that the electrode structure was such that two liquid crystal molecules were driven in the left and right directions, and the initial alignment direction of the liquid crystal molecules was parallel to the scanning signal electrodes. It was made. As a result of measuring the viewing angle characteristics in the same manner as in Example 1, gradation inversion did not occur at all angles.

[Embodiment 7] FIG. 9 is a view showing the structure of various electrodes in a unit pixel according to a sixth embodiment of the present invention. A liquid crystal display device was manufactured in the same manner as in Example 2 except that the pixel electrode and the common electrode were non-parallel as shown in the figure, and the angle formed was 5 degrees. As a result of measuring the viewing angle characteristics in the same manner as in Example 1, gradation inversion did not occur at all angles.

[0016]

According to the present invention, it is possible to provide a liquid crystal display device of a horizontal electric field type having a wide viewing angle, which is completely free of gradation inversion without increasing the number of rubbing processes.

Further, it is possible to provide a liquid crystal display device having the above-mentioned characteristics and capable of multi-gradation display. Further, it is possible to provide a liquid crystal display device having a high aperture ratio and having the above characteristics.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a sectional view of an example of a liquid crystal display device of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view of a unit pixel of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a circuit diagram of a system configuration in the liquid crystal display device of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a plan view of a unit pixel of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a plan view of a unit pixel of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a plan view of a unit pixel of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a plan view of a unit pixel of a liquid crystal display device of a comparative example.

FIG. 8 is a plan view of a unit pixel of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a plan view of a unit pixel of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... Image signal electrode, 2 ... Pixel electrode, 3 ... Common electrode, 4 ...
Scanning signal electrodes, 5 ... Transistor element, 6 ... Initial alignment direction of liquid crystal, 7 ... Electric field direction, 8 ... Liquid crystal molecule when voltage is applied.

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (72) Keiichiro Ashizawa Inventor, 3300 Hayano, Mobara, Chiba Prefecture, Electronic Devices Division, Hitachi, Ltd. (72) Inventor Masuyuki Ota 3300, Hayano, Mobara, Chiba Hitachi, Ltd. Electronic Device Business (72) Inventor Masato Oe 3300 Hayano, Mobara-shi, Chiba Hitachi, Ltd. Electronic Device Division

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A display pixel comprises a scanning signal electrode, a video signal electrode,
A pixel electrode, a reference electrode, and an active element are formed on a substrate, and a liquid crystal alignment film is formed on the electrode group directly or through an insulating layer, and the substrate is formed with the alignment film. The two substrates are arranged so as to face each other, and a liquid crystal layer is sandwiched between the two substrates, the electrode group is configured to apply an electric field to the liquid crystal layer substantially parallel to the substrate, and the electrode group is externally controlled. In the liquid crystal display device, which is connected to the means and has a polarizing means for changing the optical characteristics of the liquid crystal layer, the initial alignment direction of the liquid crystal molecules is one direction, and a plurality of driving directions of the liquid crystal molecules are set in one pixel. A liquid crystal display device having. 2. The display pixel comprises a scanning signal electrode, a video signal electrode,
A pixel electrode, a reference electrode, and an active element are formed on a substrate, and a liquid crystal alignment film is formed on the electrode group directly or through an insulating layer, and the substrate is formed with the alignment film. The two substrates are arranged so as to face each other, and a liquid crystal layer is sandwiched between the two substrates, the electrode group is configured to apply an electric field to the liquid crystal layer substantially parallel to the substrate, and the electrode group is externally controlled. A liquid crystal display device, which is connected to the liquid crystal layer and has a polarizing means for changing the optical characteristics of the liquid crystal layer, wherein the pixel electrode and the common electrode in the opening have a bent structure. 3. The liquid crystal display device according to claim 2, wherein there are two or more types of distances between the pixel electrode and the common electrode in one pixel. 4. The liquid crystal display device according to claim 2, wherein the image signal electrode or the scanning signal electrode has a bent structure.