Large-screen LCD televisions provide us with high-picture-quality video and life-like experiences in the comfort of our own homes. These TVs use liquid crystal display (LCD) technology. Recently, TVs with screens larger than 100 inches and 3D video technology have been gaining in popularity.

The world's first practical LCD appeared in 1973 in Japan, where it was used in an electronic calculator. At that time, LCDs could only display alphanumeric characters, but as technology advanced, the LCD became larger and its resolution increased.

As LCDs also became lighter in weight, thinner, and more energy efficient, they were used in a wider variety of devices, such as notebook PCs, digital cameras, video cameras, video game consoles and mobile phones. More recently, high-resolution screens in mobile phones have been making our daily lives more convenient while changing the way we live.

The LCD enables high-quality display. In efforts to make images clearer and easier to view, LCDs are increasing in size, while offering higher resolution.

If you look closely at an enlarged LCD screen, you will notice that it is made up of many small dots. These dots make it possible for the screen to display color and detail clearly. The image is displayed by making the dots brighter or darker.

These dots are called pixels (short for "picture elements"). Generally, a pixel consists of three colors: red, green and blue. Each pixel has a switch that passes light through the colors in it. Since recent LCDs have more than 2 million pixels, each LCD has more than 6 million switches (2 million x 3 colors), a huge number. High-definition images are displayed by controlling these switches. The LCD steppers and scanners expose these very tiny, almost invisible, switches onto a thin glass plate that is part of the LCD.

LCD steppers and scanners irradiate light onto a photomask, which contains the original design for a circuit that becomes the switch. The light passes through a lens and then exposes the circuit onto a glass plate. In the case of large glass plates, the exposure process is performed multiple times to form the circuit across the entire glass plate. However, as the requirements for larger screen sizes increase, the sizes of the glass plates also increase. To manufacture LCDs more efficiently, circuits need to be exposed at one time over a larger area, and a greater number of display panels must be obtained from a single glass plate. To achieve this, the larger glass plates also require larger lenses - and larger LCD steppers and scanners.

To satisfy these requirements, Nikon has revolutionized the LCD manufacturing process by employing the Multi-lens Projection Optical System. This has made it possible to expose over a wide area by lining up multi-lenses in two rows. This method is truly innovative, because as the glass plates grow in size, their needs can be met by increasing the number of multi-lenses.

As our society has become more sophisticated, LCDs have become increasingly important not only for use in TVs and PCs, but also in fields such as digital signage and mobile devices. The range of applications in which LCDs are used to display a wealth of information, such as high-definition video, is expected to continue to grow. LCD steppers and scanners that continue to evolve through the introduction of new technologies are indispensable to the successful manufacturing of larger, higher-resolution LCDs. Nikon is committed to contributing to advancements in LCDs through its own optical technology innovations.