Display device

• US 7,916,259 B2
• Filed: 11/20/2006
• Issued: 03/29/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/24/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Kawashima, Yuki, Nagata, Hisashi
• Primary Examiner(s): Kianni; K. Cyrus
• Application Number:
  US12/280,103
• Publication Number:
  US 20090066896A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,590 Days
• Field of Search: 349/139, 349/141
• US Class Current: 349/141
• CPC Class Codes: G02F 1/133371 Cells with varying thickness of the liquid crystal layer
• CPC Class Codes: G02F 1/133555 Transflectors
• CPC Class Codes: G02F 1/133707 Structures for producing distorted electric fields, e.g. bumps, protrusions, recesses, slits in pixel electrodes
• CPC Class Codes: G02F 1/134363 for applying an electric field parallel to the substrate, i.e. in-plane switching [IPS]
• CPC Class Codes: G02F 2201/124 interdigital

Abstract

A display device according to the present invention contains a transparent display unit (18) and a reflective display unit (19) in one pixel. The reflective display unit (19) is provided with an insulating layer (8) constituting a multi-gap layer, and a pixel electrode (16) and a common electrode (17) set closer to a display surface than a reflective film (7) at least through the insulating layer. The reflective film (7) is provided on the same plane as the insulating layer (8) in the lower substrate (10) and covered with the insulating layer (8), or provided in a lower layer than the insulating layer (8) in the lower substrate (10) and overlapped with the insulating layer (8).

Claims

1. A display device comprising:

a pair of substrates, made up of a display-side substrate and a backside substrate, facing each other, that is on an opposite side of the display-side substrate, and a medium layer made up of a display medium which is sandwiched by the display-side substrate and the backside substrate, the display medium being driven and displayed by an electric field applied between comb-teeth electrodes provided on at least one of the pair of substrates,

a pixel including (i) a transparent display section that carries out a transparent display in response to an electric field applied between the comb-teeth electrodes and (ii) a reflective display section, having a reflective member provided separately from the comb-teeth electrodes, that carries out a reflective display in response to an electric field applied between ones of the comb-teeth electrodes, said ones of the comb-teeth electrodes and the reflective member overlapping each other,

the reflective display section including a multi-gap layer, having an insulative property, which is provided on the backside substrate and which projects toward the medium layer so that the medium layer has a thinner thickness in the reflective display section than in the transparent display section, and the comb-teeth electrodes being provided, via at least the multi-gap layer, so as to be closer to a display surface than is the reflective member, and

the reflective member being provided on a same plane as the multi-gap layer so as to be covered with the multi-gap layer, and being provided on a same plane as the comb-teeth electrodes provided on the backside substrate in the transparent display section.

2. The display device according to claim 1, wherein the comb-teeth electrodes in the reflective display section is provided on the multi-gap layer of the backside substrate.