The History of Flat Panel Displays: From LCD and Plasma to OLED and Beyond

In 1888, Friedrich Reinitzer, a botanist in Prague, Austria, was measuring the melting point of a compound extracted from carrots when he observed something strange. A substance called cholesteryl benzoate underwent two distinct transitions when heated. At 145.5°C it changed from an opaque solid to a cloudy liquid, and at 178.5°C it became a clear, transparent liquid. Between those two points, the material existed in a peculiar intermediate state — neither solid nor liquid. Unable to explain what he was seeing, Reinitzer sent a sample to German physicist Otto Lehmann.^[1]

Peering at the substance through a microscope, Lehmann realized something remarkable. This cloudy liquid maintained the orderly molecular arrangement of a crystal while still flowing like a liquid. He called it a “liquid crystal” (flüssige Kristalle). It would take nearly eighty more years before this strange material became the cornerstone of a technology that would transform how humanity looks at screens.

The Problem the Cathode Ray Tube Left Behind

From the 1950s through the 1990s, the cathode ray tube (CRT) held an absolute monopoly over television and computer monitor markets. But CRTs had a structural limitation that was nearly impossible to overcome. Because an electron beam needed sufficient distance to reach the far corners of a wide screen, the larger the picture, the thicker and heavier the device. A 29-inch CRT television could easily weigh over 40 kilograms; 36-inch models sometimes reached 90 kilograms. A thin screen that could hang on a wall, or a light display that could fit inside a laptop — these were dreams that the physical principles of CRT made impossible.^[2]

To solve this problem, research into multiple approaches proceeded simultaneously from the 1960s onward. Two of those approaches would go on to divide the display market for decades to come: liquid crystal displays (LCD) and plasma display panels (PDP), which used gas discharge.

The Dawn of the Liquid Crystal Display: RCA’s Gamble

In the 1960s, a young engineer named George Heilmeier was working at the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) research laboratory in the United States. He became interested in the property of liquid crystal materials to change light transmission in response to an electric field. Beginning in 1964, he researched a display based on this principle, and in 1968 RCA unveiled the world’s first liquid crystal display prototype.^[3]

The technology Heilmeier developed was called Dynamic Scattering Mode (DSM). When a voltage was applied, the liquid crystal molecules scattered randomly, diffusing light. However, this approach had a critical drawback: it consumed too much power, image quality was insufficient, and operational lifespan was short. RCA judged the technology to have low commercial value and abandoned commercialization. Heilmeier would not be recognized as the father of LCD technology until decades later.^[3]

The real breakthrough came from Switzerland in 1971. Martin Schadt and Wolfgang Helfrich at the Hoffmann-LaRoche laboratory invented the Twisted Nematic (TN) method.^[4] In TN mode, liquid crystal molecules form a 90-degree helical structure between two polarizing filters. Without voltage, light rotates through this helical structure and passes through; when voltage is applied, the molecules align in a column and block the light. Power consumption was far lower than DSM and the lifespan was considerably longer.

TN-mode LCDs were first commercialized in 1972, initially used to display numbers on calculators and digital watches. Seiko’s digital watches and Casio’s calculators of the 1970s conquered the global market with this technology.^[5] However, the LCDs of this era were limited to displaying simple monochrome numbers or symbols. They were nowhere near sufficient in resolution, color reproduction, or response speed to serve as television or computer screens.

The Rise of Active Matrix: The TFT-LCD Revolution

For LCD to advance beyond simple calculator screens to become a full-color video display, a critical technological innovation was needed. That innovation was the Active Matrix method based on Thin-Film Transistors (TFT).

In the earlier TN-LCD passive matrix approach, each pixel was controlled directly by voltage at the intersection of horizontal and vertical lines. As the number of pixels increased, cross-interference worsened, causing a “crosstalk” problem that degraded image quality. The active matrix approach solved this by placing a small transistor beneath each pixel. The transistors could hold the voltage state of each pixel and control them individually.^[6]

The foundational work in TFT technology was pioneered by Peter Brody at the Westinghouse research laboratory. In 1973, he implemented the first TFT array using cadmium sulfide (CdSe), and the following year demonstrated the first active matrix liquid crystal display. Amorphous silicon TFT was independently developed in 1979 by a research team at the University of Dundee in the UK, laying the groundwork for mass production. Japanese companies then played a leading role in commercializing the technology. Sharp demonstrated the first 14-inch TFT-LCD panel in 1988, proving to the industry that large-format color flat panels were possible. In the early 1990s, TFT-LCD was adopted in earnest for laptop computers, opening the door to the era of portable computing.^[6]

In the early 1990s, Japanese companies — Sharp, NEC, Hitachi, and Toshiba — led the world in TFT-LCD panel production. Starting in the mid-1990s, however, Korean and Taiwanese companies entered the market with massive investments. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics (then known as Gold Star) rapidly absorbed the manufacturing expertise Japan had built and invested in larger-scale production lines. Taiwan’s AUO, Innolux, and CMO followed. By the mid-2000s, this order had completely reversed, with Korea and Taiwan leading global LCD panel production. From the 2010s onward, Chinese companies — BOE and CSOT — seized the market through sheer volume.^[7]

A Rival Born of Fire: The Rise of Plasma Displays

While LCD was slowly developing in the small-screen segment, a completely different technology was racing ahead in the large-screen market: the Plasma Display Panel (PDP).

The plasma display was invented in 1964 by Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), as part of the PLATO educational computer system.^[8] The principle is similar to that of a fluorescent lamp. Small cells filled with inert gases such as neon and xenon are charged with voltage to trigger a discharge. The gas enters a plasma state and emits ultraviolet radiation. This UV light stimulates the red, green, and blue phosphors coated on the inner walls of the cell, producing visible light. Each pixel generates its own light — a “self-emissive” structure.

The self-emissive design produced characteristics that were fundamentally different from LCD. Without the need for a backlight, brightness was uniform across the entire screen, and the display excelled particularly at rendering true black. In LCD, completely blocking the backlight is difficult, so black tends to appear slightly gray. In plasma, the cell simply stops discharging. Plasma’s contrast ratio was overwhelmingly superior to LCD.

From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, plasma was the undisputed champion in the market for large flat-panel TVs of 40 inches and above. Japan’s Pioneer, Panasonic, Fujitsu, and Hitachi, along with Korea’s LG and Samsung, all entered the plasma TV market.^[8] In 2004, Panasonic released a 65-inch plasma TV, and Pioneer’s “KURO” series — celebrated for delivering the best picture quality of its time — became a legendary product among video professionals.

LCD vs. Plasma: A Decade of War

One of the fiercest technological battles in the consumer electronics market of the 2000s was the contest between LCD TVs and plasma TVs. On the surface, the two technologies seemed to divide the market by screen size: LCD for 32 inches and under, plasma for 42 inches and above — that was the conventional wisdom at the time. Yet the outcome was a lopsided victory for LCD.

The reasons for plasma’s defeat lay not in inferior technology, but in structural disadvantages. First, plasma panels were inherently difficult to miniaturize. Because the discharge cells had a physical minimum size, producing high-resolution panels smaller than 42 inches was nearly impossible.^[9] The shift in demand toward smartphones, tablets, laptops, and small TVs represented a market plasma simply could not enter. LCD, by contrast, could address everything from calculator-screen size to large-screen TVs using essentially the same manufacturing process.

Second, there was the issue of yield and manufacturing costs. The TFT substrate at the heart of an LCD panel was similar to semiconductor fabrication, meaning costs dropped rapidly as technology advanced. Plasma’s different structure made it difficult to reduce costs at the same pace. Third, plasma consumed more power than LCD, and when fixed patterns remained on screen for extended periods, the phosphors in those areas would age faster than the rest — a phenomenon known as “burn-in.”

The decisive blow was LCD’s improvement in contrast ratio. In the late 2000s, LCD manufacturers introduced “local dimming” technology, dividing the screen into zones and reducing backlight intensity in dark areas, which dramatically improved contrast. As the gap in deep-black reproduction — plasma’s greatest strength — began to close, plasma’s remaining advantages became less and less compelling.^[9]

Pioneer halted plasma TV production in 2010, Panasonic followed in 2013, and Samsung exited the plasma TV business in 2014. LG Electronics produced its last plasma TV in 2014, officially ending the era of the plasma display. It had been approximately fifty years since its invention, and barely a decade since its commercial peak.

Organic Light: The Birth of OLED

Even as plasma was fading, the next generation of technology was already taking root.

In 1987, Ching W. Tang and Steven Van Slyke at the Eastman Kodak research laboratory in the United States were the first to create a practical device based on organic electroluminescence — the phenomenon by which organic compounds emit light when an electric current is passed through them. The structure was simple, consisting of just two organic thin-film layers, but the paper they published became the foundation for the entire OLED industry.^[10]

The phenomenon of organic electroluminescence had been known since the 1960s. However, luminous efficiency was so low that practical application seemed impossible. What Tang and Van Slyke achieved was to separate the electron transport layer from the hole transport layer, designing the device so that light emission occurred at the interface between the two layers. This improved efficiency by dozens of times. The operating voltage also dropped from hundreds of volts to below 10 volts.^[10]

OLED’s first commercial application came in 1997, when Pioneer adopted a small OLED screen for a car stereo display. In 2003, Kodak released a digital camera with an OLED screen. But OLED entered the mainstream display market in 2010, when Samsung began large-scale adoption of AMOLED (Active Matrix OLED) panels in smartphones. AMOLED, which uses an active matrix (TFT) drive to control each pixel individually, made high-resolution displays possible.^[11]

OLED holds two structural advantages over LCD. First, because it is self-emissive, no backlight is needed, which means panels can be made extremely thin. Going further, organic thin films can be implemented on flexible substrates, enabling foldable “flexible” displays. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold series of foldable smartphones is the flagship embodiment of this technology. Second, each pixel can be completely switched off to render a perfect black. The very advantage plasma had championed against LCD — deep-black reproduction — OLED has now brought back to the LCD monitor and TV market.

In the large-screen TV market, OLED is led by LG Display. LG released the world’s first 55-inch curved OLED TV in 2013, establishing an early-mover position in the large-panel OLED market. LG Display’s approach is WOLED (White OLED), which places RGB color filters in front of a white OLED light-emitting layer. Samsung, by contrast, uses individual RGB OLED sub-pixels (RGB OLED) in its smartphones, and for the TV market has developed QD-OLED, a technology that combines quantum dots with OLED.^[12]

What Comes Next

The advancement of display technology has not stopped. Multiple technologies targeting the post-OLED era are now competing for commercialization.

MicroLED arrays inorganic LED elements just tens of micrometers in size directly onto a substrate. Unlike OLED, which uses organic compounds, inorganic LEDs degrade far more slowly in response to heat and light, eliminating burn-in and offering substantially longer lifespans. Peak brightness also surpasses OLED. Samsung unveiled the world’s first microLED TV, “The Wall,” in 2018. However, the process of uniformly transplanting millions of minute LED elements onto a substrate is extraordinarily difficult, and mass-production costs have yet to be dramatically reduced.^[13]

QD-OLED combines the strengths of quantum dot technology with OLED. The approach converts blue light from an OLED panel using quantum dot materials to generate red and green, achieving significantly higher color gamut and brightness compared to conventional WOLED. Samsung Display is leading this technology and has been mass-producing TV panels since 2022.^[12]

Transparent displays and rollable displays are also moving into the commercialization phase. LG released a rollable OLED TV that can be stored in a roll in 2019, and transparent OLED panels are beginning to appear in commercial spaces — embedded in the glass windows of buildings and the doors of refrigerators.

What the Technological Competition Left Behind

The history of flat panel displays has been a process of multiple technologies competing simultaneously and the market selecting its winners. LCD defeated plasma on the axes of miniaturization and cost reduction. OLED opened a new axis — self-emission and flexibility — and attacked LCD’s limitations head-on. And microLED is now targeting OLED’s limits in lifespan and brightness.

Throughout this process, the geography of technological leadership continued to shift. In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States and Europe pioneered the basic science of liquid crystals, but it was Japan that first achieved commercialization. In the 1990s and 2000s, Korea and Taiwan displaced Japan through large-scale investment and manufacturing efficiency. From the 2010s, China took the volume lead in LCD. Yet in OLED and next-generation technologies, Korean companies have once again maintained their lead. The display industry has repeatedly demonstrated that rankings, once established, are never fixed.

In 1888, in a Prague laboratory, Reinitzer observed a cloudy intermediate substance that was neither solid nor liquid. That substance was relegated for a time to the fringes of physics, simply because it defied easy categorization. The fact that it ultimately transformed how all of humanity looks at screens serves as a reminder of just how difficult it is to predict where any given piece of basic research will lead.