Liquid Crystal Display Drivers

Summary

Liquid Crystal Display Drivers deals with Liquid Crystal Displays from the electronic engineering point of view and is the first expressively focused on their driving circuits. After introducing the physical-chemical properties of the LC substances, their evolution and application to LCDs, the book converges to the examination and in-depth explanation of those reliable techniques, architectures, and design solutions amenable to efficiently design drivers for passive-matrix and active-matrix LCDs, both for small size and large size panels. Practical approaches regularly adopted for mass production but also emerging ones are discussed. The topics treated have in many cases general validity and found application also in alternative display technologies (OLEDs, Electrophoretic Displays, etc.).

Author Biography

David Joseph Roger Cristaldi graduated in Electronics Engineering at the University of Catania in 2005. In his thesis, developed at STMicroelectronics, he studied low-power design methodologies for liquid crystal display drivers. In 2006 he obtained the Italian qualification for the engineer profession and in the same year he was admitted to the Ph.D. course in Electronics Engineering, Automation Engineering, and Control of Complex Systems. His current research activity concerns analysis and modeling of electromagnetic-interference effects on Sigma-Delta analog-to-digital converters. Dr. Cristaldi received the Ph.D. degree in 2009.Salvatore Pennisi received the laurea degree in electronic engineering in 1992 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1997, both from the University of Catania. He joined in 1996 the Department of Electrical Electronics and Systems Engineering (DIEES), University of Catania, as an Assistant Professor and he was appointed an Associate Professor in 2002. Since then, he has been engaged in scientific projects in collaboration with national and international academic and industrial partners. His main research interests include circuit theory and analog design with emphasis on low-voltage and current-mode techniques. In this field, he has developed several building blocks and unconventional architectures of operational amplifiers. More recently, his research activities have involved multi-stage amplifiers with related frequency compensation, data converters and the analysis of high-frequency distortion in analog circuits such as feedback amplifiers, oscillators and filters. He published over 60 papers in international journals and more than 120 contributions in conference proceedings, he is the co-author of the books CMOS Current Amplifiers (1999) and Feedback Amplifiers: Theory and Design (2001), both edited by Kluwer Academic Publishers, and has written an entry in the Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Dr. Pennisi is senior member of the IEEE since 2004 and is a member of the IEEE CAS Analog Signal Processing Technical Committee. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-Part II: Express Briefs.Francesco Pulvirenti graduated in Electronic Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1989. After the military service, he joined STMicroelectronics, Castelletto (Milan) site, in 1991 and then he moved to Catania site in 1993. He started working in the Industrial and Peripheral Division developing Smart Power ICs for Industrial Applications, Linear Regulators, Switching Mode Power Supply and Power Management for Industrial, Mobile Phone, Battery Charger and Computer Applications. In 2001 he moved to Display segment to manage the design of new Drivers dedicated to Liquid Crystal Display Applications for portable equipments and in 2004 he was appointed Design Director of the Display Division. Since 2007 he is working in the Industrial and Power Conversion Division to define and develop new products for Photovoltaic Applications and he is currently managing a team of about 30 people as Business Unit Director. Francesco Pulvirenti holds 32 patents on Analog and Smart Power ICs in the USA, he has 4 patents pending and he is also author or co-author of 8 papers on full custom ICs.

Forewords	p. xi
Preface	p. xv
Liquid Crystals	p. 1
Early History	p. 1
Classification	p. 7
Cause of formation	p. 7
Shape and molecular structure	p. 8
Liquid crystal phases	p. 10
Physical Characteristics	p. 14
Molecular order	p. 15
Elastic properties	p. 15
Surface Aligning Properties	p. 16
Viscosity	p. 19
Electromagnetic Properties	p. 20
Ion Transport	p. 23
Optical Properties and Birefringence	p. 24
Temperature Effects	p. 28
Concluding Remarks	p. 28
References	p. 30
Liquid Crystal Displays	p. 33
Towards the First LCD	p. 33
The first LC Application	p. 34
The Pioneering Role of RCA	p. 34
The First LCD	p. 37
The Pocket Calculator	p. 40
The Twisted Nematic Mode	p. 42
TN Principle of Operation	p. 43
Electro-Optic Transfer Function (EOTF)	p. 45
LC Capacitance	p. 48
Response Time	p. 48
Viewing Angle	p. 49
Application of the TN Mode	p. 51
The LC Digital Watch	p. 53
New High-Performance LC Materials	p. 54
Further Developments	p. 56
Passive Addressing and Super Twisted Nematic Mode	p. 56
Active Matrix Addressing Schemes	p. 58
The First LCD for Television Set	p. 61
Improving the Viewing Angle	p. 62
Concluding Remarks	p. 65
References	p. 68
Passive LCDs and Their Addressing Techniques	p. 75
Seven-Segment Displays and Direct Addressing	p. 75
Addressing of Passive-Matrix LCDs	p. 78
Single Line Addressing	p. 81
Multiple Line Addressing	p. 83
Further considerations on MLA	p. 88
Active Addressing	p. 89
Distributed MLA	p. 90
Limitations of Passive-Matrix Addressing	p. 91
Maximum Drive Margin	p. 92
Minimum Driving Voltage	p. 95
Crosstalk	p. 96
Displaying Gray Levels	p. 99
Spatial Dithering	p. 100
Pulse Width Modulation	p. 100
Frame Rate Control	p. 101
Mixed Techniques	p. 102
Column Pulse Height Modulation	p. 103
Row Pulse Height Modulation	p. 104
Concluding Remarks	p. 104
References	p. 106
Drivers for Passive-Matrix LCDs	p. 109
Driver Architecture	p. 109
Host Interface	p. 111
Interfaces	p. 111
LUT/Dithering	p. 112
Power Manager	p. 114
Temperature-Compensated Voltage Generator	p. 114
Temperature Sensor	p. 116
DC/DC Converter	p. 119
Driver Manager	p. 122
One Time Programmable Memory	p. 122
Oscillator (Internal Clock Generator)	p. 122
Control Logic	p. 124
Image Processing	p. 125
Display Data RAM	p. 125
Color Processing	p. 125
MLA and Gray Generation	p. 129
Timing Controller (TCON)	p. 129
Output Driver	p. 129
Row Drivers	p. 129
Column Drivers	p. 130
Silicon Processes for Display Drivers	p. 133
Packaging and Assembling Techniques	p. 135
Chip on Flex	p. 136
Chip on Glass	p. 138
Concluding Remarks	p. 139
References	p. 141
Active Matrix LCDS and Their Addressing Techniques	p. 145
Thin Film Transistors	p. 146
a-Si TFT	p. 149
Poly-Si TFT	p. 149
Further comparison of a-Si and poly-Si TFT performance	p. 151
Structure of an Amled Panel	p. 152
General Considerations	p. 154
Kickback	p. 157
RC Delay and Pre-emphasis Driving Method	p. 159
Crosstalk Reduction and Polarity Inversion Techniques	p. 162
Crosstalk in AMLCDs	p. 162
Power Analysis of Polarity-Inversion Techniques	p. 168
Kickback Compensation Methods	p. 169
2-Level Driving	p. 170
VCOM Switching	p. 172
3-Level Driving	p. 176
4-Level Driving	p. 179
Concluding Remarks	p. 182
References	p. 184
Drivers for Active-Matrix LCDs	p. 189
Amled Driver Architectures	p. 190
Driver Architecture for Small-area a-Si Panels	p. 190
Driver Architecture for LTPS Panels	p. 192
Driver Architecture for Large-area Panels	p. 195
Video Interfaces	p. 198
Low Voltage Differential Signalling	p. 199
Source Drivers	p. 203
DACs	p. 204
Polarity Inversion	p. 211
Pre-emphasis	p. 212
Analog Buffers	p. 215
Charge Sharing	p. 218
Gate Drivers	p. 222
Shift Registers	p. 222
Level Shifters	p. 226
Digital Buffers	p. 228
References	p. 230
Charge Pumps for LCD Drivers	p. 237
Analysis of the Charge Pump with a Pure Capacitive Load	p. 238
One-stage Charge Pump	p. 238
N-stage Charge Pump	p. 239
Charge Pump Parameters	p. 241
Optimized Design of the Charge Pump with a Pure Capacitive Load	p. 243
Minimizing Area Occupation and Rise Time	p. 244
Minimizing Charge Consumption	p. 245
Comparison between the Optimized Design Strategies	p. 246
Analysis of the Charge Pump with a Current Load	p. 248
Optimized Design of the Charge Pump With a Current Load	p. 251
Minimizing Area Occupation	p. 252
Minimizing Current (Power) Consumption	p. 252
Comparison between the Optimized Design Strategies	p. 253
Voltages In a CP with a Current Load	p. 255
Evaluation of Voltages in the Inner Nodes	p. 255
Behavior of the Voltages Across the Switches	p. 256
Charge Pump Topologies	p. 257
The Dickson Charge Pump	p. 257
The Bootstrap Charge Pump	p. 258
Double Charge Pumps	p. 260
Series-Parallel Charge Pumps	p. 261
Charge Pumps with Adaptive Number of Stages	p. 262
Concluding Remarks	p. 263
References	p. 264
Flat Panel Displays	p. 267
Display Specifications	p. 277
Matrices for MLA	p. 281
Color Perception and Description	p. 285
About the Authors	p. 289
Index	p. 291
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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