1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, owing to the rapid development of the electronics and information industries, products developed by these industries are becoming increasingly sophisticated. For current personal computers, in addition to efforts to realize faster and more powerful computing units and to offer a wide range of peripheral equipment to meet user needs, a key area of development in the computer industry relates to realizing a more compact size, lighter weight, and thinner profile for personal computers.
Liquid crystal displays have the advantages of high definition, small size, lightweight, low driving voltage, and low power consumption. Moreover, liquid crystal displays can be used in a wide range of applications, such as in portable televisions, mobile phones, camcorders, notebook computers, desktop monitors, and other consumer electronics products, and as a result, have become the most commonly used display configuration.
With the continued advancement in various technologies, liquid crystal displays are expected to become even thinner. To satisfy such a requirement, the inner components of liquid crystal displays are manufactured as thin as possible. For instance, a thin glass substrate of a width of less than 0.5 mm may be used to manufacture a liquid crystal display.
However, the foregoing approach not only easily results in bending of the substrates of the liquid crystal displays, but also results in difficulties related to transporting the liquid crystal displays, so as to reduce the yield rate of manufacture. Furthermore, when the liquid crystal displays utilizing such substrates are inadvertently bumped, breakages, nicks and other damage to the substrates may occur. Although an approach of replacing the thin glass substrate with a thin membrane made of rubber has been considered, limitations such as the temperature of manufacturing the thin membrane make this approach impractical.
A manufacturing method has been proposed in which the thickness of a liquid crystal display is reduced by etching one of the substrates therein. According to this manufacturing method, the thickness of one of the substrates is etched to about 0.1-0.2 mm, and the thickness of another one of the substrates is maintained at about 0.3-1.1 mm. Through such a configuration, a sufficient strength for the liquid crystal display is ensured. However, liquid crystal displays manufactured by such a manufacturing method are still not sufficiently thin and lightweight. Moreover, such a method increases the overall cost of manufacture.
Therefore, many in the industry are endeavoring to develop techniques that enable the thinning of display apparatuses without reducing the structural strength thereof.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds