Merck KGaA will be presenting its broad range of products for display applications at this year's SID Display Week in Los Angeles from May 15 to 20, 2011. The Darmstadt-based company has chosen "The Perfect Pixel" as its motto, once again underscoring its role as the innovation and global leader in the field of liquid crystals.
Merck markets liquid crystals, which are used in televisions, tablet PCs, monitors, etc., under the brand name licristal®. They support not only TN (Twisted Nematic), IPS (In-Plane Switching) and VA (Vertical Alignment), but also the latest PS-VA technology (Polymer Stabilized Vertical Alignment) and are therefore one of the key factors behind the success of LC displays. The new PS-VA materials make faster switching times possible and significantly lower the power consumption of LCD televisions. They are also part of Merck's innovative licristal® portfolio and are based on a combination of liquid crystals and specially designed reactive mesogens produced in a high-tech manufacturing process.
Many years of experience as well as intensive research work have led to the development of the licrivue® portfolio. These are ready-to-use reactive mesogen mixtures or formulations, which may currently be used primarily in 3D liquid crystal displays (LCDs) based on structured optical films (λ/4 or λ/2 films). Broadband Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Reflective Polarizer Films (BB CLC RPF) are another application of reactive mesogens. These types of products result in greater display brightness and/or a noticeable reduction in power consumption. This is achieved by decreasing the brightness of the backlight units while maintaining sufficiently high brightness values of the display.
Merck offers a broad range of efficient lighting materials (phosphors) for makers of LEDs (light-emitting diodes). Marketed under the isiphor brand name, they support color-on-demand concepts ranging from warm to cold white light. However, the range of applications for conventional ortho-silicate phosphors, often referred to as BOSE, was limited. To solve this problem, Merck is now applying its newly developed Tool Box Approach for the first time. Instead of focusing on only individual production parameters, this approach takes several aspects into account, for example the chemical composition as well as the quality and reactivity of the starting materials, the additives as well as further refinements of the phosphor material. The result of the Tool Box Approach is isiphor® stable BOSE, an ortho-silicate lighting material for all LED application areas that shows high stability and effectiveness even under extreme conditions.
For small-molecule-based OLEDs, the expanded livilux® range now includes a complete new selection of electron and hole transport materials as well as highly efficient matrix (host) materials. This enables display and lighting customers to further decrease the operating voltage while increasing the overall efficiency of the OLED at the same time. Merck uses state-of-the-art analytical systems and methods to ensure a high degree of reliability and purity.
Touchscreens are ubiquitous in the communication world of today. With the isishape® range, Merck markets efficient and environmentally friendly structuring materials that are being successfully deployed in this new generation of displays. One highlight is isishape HiperEtch®, which enables the selective etching of antireflex coatings, passivation layers and transparent conductive materials for displays and related applications. Used not only to manufacture touch panels, flexible displays, OLEDs, electroluminescence (EL) backlights and similar products, the isishape® concept has also been successfully applied in the photovoltaic industry for many years now.
The lisicon® range offers manufacturers of flexible displays, organic solar cells and organic RFID chips a large selection of printable organic electronic materials. Apart from highly sophisticated formulations of organic semiconductors, this also includes dielectrics, materials for surface treatment as well as additional organic process aids.
