The transparent LCD is a kind of LCD screen that you can see through it when it’s working. You can read the information on the screen and see what’s behind it at the same time. Such a screen is not a new technology. It’s a branch of the traditional screen which has been more than 20 years.

The biggest difference between a transparent LCD and with traditional LCD screen is its light transmittance is higher. In theory, the higher the light transmittance, the better the effect that you can see through the screen.

The transparent LCD is the core part of the transparent monitor. It can not emit light by itself, so the backlight is essential when it’s working. If you don’t like the backlight, then what we recommend is the transparent OLED. 

The transparent LCD is widely used in lots of applications, for example, video walls, vending machines, display boxes, and others. It usually is used with a touch screen. Such LCD with touch screen is interactive and interesting.

The transparent LCD  is made by a daily used liquid crystal display screen. Such a product is an LCD panel without an LED backlight. It has a proper name which is called open cell LCD panel. It doesn’t have a frame and the thickness is just about 1.4mm.

The transparent LCD has many custom features, such as size, resolution, and so on. If you want to use the such product normally, there are also some details that you need to pay attention to. 

Plenty of clients buy a such product from us, but they can not use them or sell it to their customers right now when they get them. That’s because the transparent LCD is just a semi-finished product. Most of the clients need to install it on their machines. 

For example, plenty of clients wanted to buy some such products for their applications, but we found they don’t know such a product very clearly. We have met a lot of similar situations. In that case, what you need most is to find a professional supplier. The professional supplier can provide the products with the best quality and reasonable price.

GECEY is the expert in this field. We can provide the full sizes of such products. Plenty of our products have been exported to many countries in the world. We can design the structures and functions by ourselves. A lot of automation software is used in our work, such as AutoCAD, Solidworks, PADS, and so on.

GECEY can provide the full sizes of the transparent LCD. Please don’t worry about there is not having the proper size for your application. The most commonly used resolution of such a screen is 1920 x 1080 (FHD). If you need the 4K resolution( 3840 x 2160 ), please feel free to contact us first.

The transparent LCD has a professional name which is called open cell panel. You can see its appearance in the picture on the left below. It looks like a black panel with a driver board. The picture on the right below is its internal structure. We can see that the structure is complex. It contains two polarizers, two glass substrates, liquid crystals, and so on.

For users, you don’t need to know all the internal structures, materials, and so on. The picture below is a very simple structure we make. You can see that there are two pieces of the polarizer. One is on the top of the glass and another is on the bottom.

The polarizer is made of a kind of material that looks like plastic. It has a direction. It just allows the light in which the waves are in the same direction to pass through. The directions of the two polarizers are perpendicular to each other. The polarizer is like a light filter. It’s used to improve the color and definition. If there is a polarizer, you can see nothing from the screen.

The reason why we introduce the polarizer is that it can greatly influence the light transmittance and brightness of the screen. For the manufacturer, we usually change the polarizer to improve the light transmittance. The production process requires special workplaces, skilled workers, special materials, and special care. This is because the transparent LCD is very fragile and easy to be damaged.

The picture is from the Samsung display.

Light transmittance is a very important parameter for transparent LCD. The higher the transmittance, the higher the brightness, and the more you can see the product behind the screen.

How much is the light transmittance of the common screen? The picture below is the SPEC of the AUO 32” open cell panel the model is T320HVN05.6 CELL. From the picture, we can see it’s 6.5%. If you check the SPEC of LCD screens which are from super manufacturers, such as Samsung, LG, AUO, and so on, you can find the transmittance of them is around 6.5%.

However, 6.5% is not enough for the transparent LCD display. So it’s essential to change the polarizer. Some special materials and polarizers are needed. The process is not easy, especially the big sizes. If the operation is wrong, the screen will be damaged.

The super manufacturers of open-cell panels will not do this for you. The process is finished by the manufacturer of a transparent LCD. So, finding a professional manufacturer is very necessary, if you want to buy some.

The transparent LCD can not work independently. It needs to be used with some essential components.

LED backlight: LCD can not emit light by itself. So it needs the backlight so that you can see through when it’s working. For details, please see the rest content.
Controller: Same with the common LCD panel, it needs the controller to work. The controller receives the signal from the computer or U disk and sends it to the panel, then the panel can display the letters, pictures, and others.

Glass: The glass is used to protect the transparent LCD. Although glass is not essential, it’s used in most applications. The LCD screen is glued on one surface of the glass.

Frame: The frame is essential. It’s used to hold the LCD screen, glass, backlight, control board, and other parts. Some clients need their supplier to make the frame for them, some others can make it by themselves.

Touch screen: It’s optional. For small sizes, the capacitive touch screen is better. For large sizes, the IR touchscreen is the most commonly used.

In order to use the transparent LCD normally, there are some very important things that you need to pay attention to.

First of all, you need to make a LED backlighting system for it. Maybe your products are display boxes, cabinets, vending machines, and others. Whatever they are, the most important is to design a space for the backlight.

The most commonly used backlight system is made of several LED strips with white light directly. The color temperature is about 6000K( pure white). The LED strips are placed on the back of the screen. They are usually located at the top or bottom or on the left and right sides of the space.

The LED strips are driven by a small controller so that they can work in sync with the transparent LCD. The LED backlight panel can also be used to make the backlight system. The key points are the light of the space should be bright and even enough.

Second, the transparent LCD is not suitable for playing pictures or videos with complex colors. The large area of complex colors will affect your to see through the screen. It would be hard to see the products behind the screen clearly. Please keep most areas of the LCD to play white color.

When the screen displays white, it’s the most perfect condition to watch the product behind it. So, when you make the pictures or videos, please keep the background to be white. Just use the transparent LCD to play the introductions or videos with simple color.

First, the transparent LCD can not emit light by itself. Second, the space around the screen can be divided into two parts: the dark area which is in front of the screen, and the bright area with backlight which is behind the screen. People can see through from the dark area to the bright area, but they can’t see through from the opposite direction.

This phenomenon is very common. For example, at night, A is standing in the shadow of the dark, and B is standing in the light. A can see B, but B can not see A. There are many products that use the same principle, such as mirror TV, smart mirror, and so on.

Most of the transparent LCDs we exported are frameless. The clients have the frame and can install the product by themselves. If you don’t have the frame, then we can also make it for you. Most of the frames are made of aluminum and iron plate. The aluminum frames are light, strong, and easy to be produced. The frames have many custom features, such as sizes, thicknesses, and so on.

Plenty of clients want to use the transparent LCD to modify their products and they just need only one piece. For example, the LCD side panel PC case is very popular. There is a transparent screen on one side of the PC case. You can see the inside of the PC and play the videos you love at the same time.

Such a case for gaming looks very amazing so lots of people want to have one. However, it’s hard for them to find a supplier to buy just one piece of transparent LCD and it would take a long time to get one. So, they want to DIY by themselves.

There are some guides online that teach people to use a common monitor to DIY a transparent LCD. For example, use the screen of a second computer monitor to make one. The simple process is to remove most parts of the LCD panel of the monitor, leaving only the LCD screen( open cell), then install some LED strips and the open cell on their PC case.

Does it work? Yes, but there are many problems in the DIY process. First of all, you need to be very careful in the DIY process. The LCD open-cell glass is very fragile. There are several flexible PCB cables at the bottom of the screen. If either of them is damaged, then the screen can not work normally.

Second, the transmittance of the screen that you DIY is much lower than the professional transparent LCD. So the final effect is not as good as you think. There are also some other problems, for example, you need to put one tempered glass to protect the LCD screen. We recommend buying one transparent LCD directly.