Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display

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What Does Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display Mean?

A thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) is a type of liquid crystal display (LCD) that makes use of thin-film transistor technology in order to improve qualities such as contrast and addressability. TFT technology means that an individual transistor is used to drive each individual pixel, allowing for faster response times.

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Techopedia Explains Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display

Thin-film transistor liquid crystal display technology uses "field-effect" transistors, which are built by layering thin films on a glass substrate, hence the name. This technique is commonly used for creating microprocessors. The TFT in the LCD controls individual pixels in the display by setting the level of the electric field across the three liquid crystal capacitors (one for each sub-pixel of red, green and blue) in the pixel in order to control the polarization of the crystal material. The amount of polarization in the crystal determines the amount of light that reaches the color filter from the backlight. Because of this ability to directly and quickly control each pixel, TFT is also called active-matrix LCD technology.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.