Environmental and optical testing of Thin Crystal Film™ polarizers

Abstract

Abstract— We have developed an advanced polarizing nanomaterial that provides new technical and economical advantages over traditional iodine film polarizers for LCD designers and manufacturers. Thin Crystal Film (TCF)™ polarizer material is based on modified organic dichroic dyes and can be simply coated as a thin molecular oriented film (less than 1 μm) directly onto a plastic or glass substrate. This crystalline material exhibits enhanced viewing‐angle characteristics, high thermal stability, and lightfastness. Replacement of conventional polarizers by the new TCF polarizer allows decreasing thickness of LCD designs by 20–75%, improving LCD durability and reliability, all while significantly reducing cost. This paper presents TCF polarizer products for LCD applications. We report the results of TCF optical and environmental testing. Ultraviolet‐light photostability of TCF is also studied.

Current status and future prospect of in-cell-polarizer technology

“…Previously, reported neutral TCF polarizer material is now referred to as N015-STD1. 1 The TCF material has been improved over time by implementing process improvements which increase purity and by optimizing the ratios of chemical components. This new TCF material, NO15-STD2, is compared to N015-STD1 in Fig.…”

“…A TCF polarizer has been developed which can be used internally in a LCD cell. 1 Based on this material, a manufacturing process has been developed for fabrication of monochrome LCDs with internal polarizers. 2 The major goal of our project is to develop a reliable method to control the nano-film crystallization of the LLC material 3 on glass or plastic substrates to produce low-cost high-performance TCF polarizers (60-1000 nm thickness) for color TFT-LCD applications.…”

38.1: Invited Paper: Current Status and Future Prospect of In‐Cell Polarizer Technology

“…Previously reported neutral TCF polarizer material is now referred to as N015-STD1 [1]. The TCF material has been improved over time by implementing process improvements which increase purity and by optimizing the ratios of chemical components.…”

“…A TCF polarizer has been developed which can be used internal to a LCD cell [1]. Based on this material, a manufacturing process has been developed for fabrication of monochrome LCDs with internal polarizers [2].…”

LCD applications of thin‐crystal‐film polarizers

“…The strong anisotropy of the refraction and absorption indices [9][10][11] makes TCF attractive for applications in liquidcrystal-displays (LCDs) and organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs). [1][2][3][4][5][6][12][13][14][15] The first industrial applications of TCF technology include plastic film polarizers, retarders, and color-correction films for the flat-panel-display (FPD) market. We discuss in this paper the optical and color characteristics of the first film products as well as their LCD applications.…”