Liquid crystal display, LCD for short is one the revolutionary and innovation display that replace the cathode ray tube (CRT) in the electronic industry. Although LCD are no longer the breaking edge in technology these days, since they are getting replaced by something more recent and more advance, but that doesn’t mean that research had stop on them. In fact most of electronics are still using LCD technology except the recent ones but before we look at the differences between LCD and OLED, which I will tag the old and the new in that order, let us shed a brief light on LCD.
LCD Tv | Picture credit: pixabay
LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY (LCD)
Liquid crystal display can be found in virtually any electronics you can mention, from your wristwatches to your computers (your laptops and the recent monitors of desktop) even most of your televisions make use of this technology, LCD can almost stand on par with OLED and some other newer technology if not for some short comings which we will be looking at in differences between LCD and OLED, but these short comings are also being researched on to make them more perfect.
Some might be asking what liquid is used in LCD since the name implies that a liquid is use and how would a crystal be a liquid in the first place, since a crystal is meant to be solid. Just relax and let use look at it one after the other.
The liquid used in LCDs are known as nematic liquid, this is a liquid that behave like a liquid and at the same time, a solid (crystal). What really happens is that the molecules of a liquid is not orderly arranged like a solid that are arranged in crystal lattice, so in other words, nematic liquids are liquids that have their molecules arranged as in crystals.
A good illustration of such a liquid is the protein secreted by spiders to make their web. If you look at one very closely when at work spinning his web, you will notice that what come out of the spinneret is a liquid and the spider will just draw the liquid and instantly you will see a thread in seconds.
What happens is that the crystals or solid is already present in the protein secreted by the spider. So we can also call a nematic liquid a composite substance (i.e. a substance that contains more than one compound). Other nematic liquids include: Proteins, cell membrane, soap solution, DNA, polypeptides, Vanadium (V) oxide, e.t.c.
So having known the major component of the LCD display, then how does it work?
HOW LCD PRODUCES IMAGE
Nematic liquids crystals molecules are shape like rod or tubes just like your vantablack, which is not a conventional paint. These rods are set into alignment by a director
LCDs produces images or pixels by selectively filtering light produced by the backlight, this is top on the list of differences between LCD and OLED. Remember that OLEDs emit their own light just like your LEDs.
The backlight that is filtered is produced by cold cathode fluorescent lamps which are LEDs that can produce white light or light of other colours .
The LEDs are fitted with shutters which have colour filters to filter out any other colour from the backlight apart from red, green and blue (RGB).
These shutters are what produces the sub-pixel which when combined produces pixels, which also combine to produce the image seen on the screen of your TV or your phone as the case may be. So after knowing how the LCD works, let’s compare LCD and OLED to know the differences between LCD and OLED.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LCD AND OLED
Just as I mentioned earlier on, the major difference between LCD and OLED is in the mode of picture generation which will lead us to some other difference or you might call short comings on behalf of LCD.
LCDs RELY ON BACKLIGHT TO GENERATE ITS IMAGE
This difference is just that LCDs can only generate image with the help of its backlight whereas OLED doesn’t need that because it can generate its own light.
HIGHER POWER COMSUPTION
LCDs consume more power than OLED or other newer technology, because the backlight must be very powerful since only a portion of it is needed to produce the pixel, thereby creating an unnecessary waste.
PICTURE QUALITY
The overall picture quality of LCDs are poor compared to OLED because OLED can achieve a high contrast ratio due to the fact that they don’t use backlight to generate their image.
WEIGHT
The weight of LCDs are generally more than that of OLEDs, since more components means more weight and also OLEDs are slimmer than LCDs.
This will be all for now, I will be bringing more interesting and educative articles to you soon, till then know how your gadgets works so that whenever you are operating then, you can have an idea of what goes on behind the screen.