We improve, we invent.

ALP engineer team is readily to offer assistance to your various questions regarding display.

About TrioLCD™: Sunlight readable transflective LCD

TrioLCD is the first series of sunlight readable display solutions offered by ALP - introduced to U.S. display market mid 2002 and granted patents in 2005.

The market demand for outdoor LCD applications, such as digital signages, kiosk displays, ATM machines, drive-through order confirmation systems, etc., has been increasing. However, a regular transmissive LCD has poor readability in outdoor environments. The common approach to solving this problem has been active enhancement, in which many extra CCFL backlight bulbs are added to the LCD module. In the cases that this approach provides a certain level of sunlight readability, there are also drawbacks, such as extra power consumption, excessive heat generation, and bulky housing. With our extensive knowledge of optical technology, Advanced Link Photonics devoted years of R&D efforts to the development of a compensatory sunlight readable solution that would enhance a LCD's sunlight readability without the negative byproducts. Years of R&D resulted in the convenient, affordable, and efficient solution for outdoor LCD applications - the TrioLCD.

ALP's TrioLCDtechnology is a patented LCD passive enhancement technology developed based on our expertise in the field of optical science - specifically, our understanding of the optical properties of a transmissive LCD. The characteristics of a TrioLCD are summarized in its name - Transmissive and Reflective Illuminations Optimized LCD, which also implies a passive optimization. The enhancement equips a LCD with ample reflectivity without compromising its original transmissive functions. With the imposed reflective function, the modified LCD can reflect the ambient light passing the LCD cell and use the reflected light beams as its source of illumination.

Hence the stronger the ambient light, the greater the reflective luminance of the LCD and the brighter the LCD would appear (Fig. 1). In fact, a TrioLCD is visible under strong ambient light even without its CCFL backlight turned on, as shown in Fig. 2.

Despite having "transflective" characteristics, a TrioLCD is free of the common shortcomings of a traditional transflective LCD, such as discoloration and low brightness indoors. With the optimized reflective and transmissive illuminations, TrioLCD comes with improved optical characteristics in luminance, contrast ratio, viewing angle, and color saturation (Figs. 3 & 4), and it is suitable for both indoor and outdoor applications.

About RT-TrioLCD™: Transflective resistive touch LCD: sunlight readable

All surfaces reflect to the ambient light, more or less. However, this common property of all surfaces become a real concern in outdoor devices with a resistive touch integrated display for that the total reflection of a resistive touch integrated display would reach as high as 20%. Newly developed high transmission touch (~96% transmission, expensive!) reduces the reflection to about 4%. Unfortunately, 4% reflection of the surface of a regular display without any resistive touch is enough to wash out the contents of the display not to mention the additional 4% or 16% introduced by the overlaid touch. Though the resistive touch could be a popular option for smaller portable devices, especially units with a display under 10.4", due to its cost and light weight, these adavantages are practically off set by it enomous glare in the outdoor enviroments.

The introduction of our TrioLCD in 2002 really offered a superior solution to many portable devices, such as rugged notebook, which can be made direct sunlight readable. However, we recogonized that the transflective property introduced into the LCD is greatly compromised when the enhanced LCD is overlaid with a resistive touch. We hence devotedsome of our R&D effort into finding a solution for units that would need to have resistive touch panel and longing for a anti-glare and anti-reflection LCD and touch panel integration technology and hopefully a new product for the display industry, which certainly came along in 2005 - we submitted a patent and started to manufacture a new series of product RT-TrioLCD.

The RT-TrioLCD integration technology is a result of a full understanding of the changes in optical property of a traveling light wave through various media and surfaces. This understanding allows us to generate an innovative way of integration for TrioLCD and a resistive touch, which eliminates majority of the unwanted reflections yet allow the effective reflection of a TrioLCD to be delivered to viewer's eyes. As a result, our sunlight readable resistive touch integrated LCD, RT-TrioLCD, is with a sunlight reflectance of <1% (Fig. 1) and is similar to the original TrioLCD (Transmissive and Reflective Illumination Optimized LCD) - being transflective.

Thus, although the transparency of the touch panel is ~75% (at wavelength 550nm), it possesses a superior sunlight readability to a high transmission resistive touch panel due to the its transflective property.	Fig. 2 shows a 15" notebook screen divided into areas A, B, and C, where A is a LCD area overlaid with a regular resistive touch, B is an area made into TrioLCD, and C is an area made into RT-TrioLCD. Indoors, all areas are viewable.
Figure 1 - Reflectance of Ambient Light on LCD with Various Resistive Touch Screens	Figure 2 - Indoor readability of screen areas A - regular touch, B - RT-TrioLCD, and C - RT-TrioLCD

However, outdoors, under conditions of both shade (Fig. 3) and direct sunlight (Fig. 4), only areas B and C, which are TrioLCD and RT-TrioLCD , are readable.

Figure 3 - Readability under the shade: screen areas A, B, and C in the shade	Figure 4 - Outdoor readability of screen areas A, B, and C under direct sunlight

We invite you to experience for yourself the remarkable effects that TrioLCD and RT-TrioLCD can have on the outdoor readability of your displays. Once again, we would like to thank our customers for their continued support and patronage.

About TriULCD™:Sunlight readable transflective LCD with high bright LED backlight

As wireless technology surges to a new peak, the market demand for mobile devices has soared for both personal and consumer applications, and especially for military and industrial applications - all of which invariably require a display that is sunlight readable and, to no less extent, power efficient.

It is ALP's unending quest to develop better sunlight readable display solutions to meet market demands. We first explored the notion of developing an LED strip to be used as a LCD backlight back in 2001. The very first LED backlight strip we developed was designed and made for a 11.3" LCD used in a rugged notebook. Although the result fell short of our hoped-for standards - due to the non-uniform luminance of the LED - the great success of TrioLCD in 2002 encouraged ALP to persist in the development of this LED backlight enhancement. By early 2005, LEDs became better at displaying color contrast, but power efficiency was still an issue that needed to be improved on. This was noted by Jerry Simmons, who manages the Solid State Lighting R&D Program at Sandia National Laboratories:

"Initially, LED-based backlight solutions for larger LCD monitors and televisions were applauded for significantly improving color rendering. It's now clear that energy saving can also be significant if the backlighting system is designed for high energy efficiency."

By 2006, there was a major breakthrough in improving the illuminant efficiency of LEDs, and this propelled us towards our long awaited success in LED backlight development.

ALP succeeded in generating a series of sunlight readable high bright LCDs with energy efficient LED backlights. For example, we are capable of enhancing a 1000 nit 5.6 inch XGA LCD, TYL056P1 to have a power consumption of merely 2.7 watts as compared to the standard 4.5 watts, which only yields a luminance of 250 nits. Along with the development of a LED backlight was the need to develop a LED driver, which we also succeeded in.

This new product series of LED backlight enhanced LCDs is the TriULCD. It is made exceptional by its triple "ultra" characteristics: ultra bright LED, ultra power saving, and ultra sunlight readable. It is the combination of these three unique characteristics that gives the "Tri-U" LCD its namesake. The brightness of our power efficient LCD with LED backlight can reach 500-1000 nits, depending on the original structure of the LCD. TriULCD can also be transflectively enhanced, which enables the display to utilize incident sunlight as its luminance - hence delivering the effective power consumption that customers desire. Our seamless modification process enables us to add all these enhancements without altering the LCD's original housing.

We offer TriULCD in sizes 2.5" to 15", with high bright LED backlighting and a highly efficient LED driver that has a 0-100% dimming range. The product is suitable for a broad range of outdoor applications, such as industrial monitors for information display, ultra mobile PCs, and other ultra mobile devices.

Our TriULCD modification process and our complete TriULCD units have been highly successful in meeting and exceeding customer expectations. You may select a TriULCD from our standard product selection guide, or contact us for more information on our TriULCD enhancement/customization solution. Customers have the option of further enhancing the LCD with our sunlight readable resistive touch technology, which is our RT-TriULCD product series.

About RT-TriULCD™:Resistive touch and high bright LED backlighted LCD

RT-TriULCD is Advanced Link Photonics' newest product series, developed to possess every feature desired in an ultra mobile application. It is made exceptional by its triple "ultra" characteristics:

These characteristics also make the product particularly suitable for UMPC applications (ultra mobile personal computers) - our ultra high bright sunlight readable transflective RT-TriULCD were introduced to the market in 2006 as a makeover solution for UMPCs.

Although most have the touch function and are compact for portability, a UMPC still does not really possess the presupposed mobility that its name implies, due to the poor readability of its highly reflective screen in most outdoor light conditions. Users are confined to using it under more moderate indoor lighting conditions. Our technological expertise and our seamless modification process enable us to add to the UMPC the transflective function (the sunlight readable properties), the high bright LED backlight, and the low reflectivity touch panel. All these enhancements are added to the LCD without altering the LCD's original mechanical properties. This all inclusive LCD enahncement process can convert a low-readability UMPC LCD into a transflective and direct sunlight readable UMPC display.

We can design/tailor the LED backlight andthe resistive touch panel to meet your specific requirements and to best integrate the modified LCD panel into your system. Our highly successful modification process - always carried out in close coordination with our customers - has earned their utmost satisfaction.