1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to a liquid crystal display (“LCD”) panel and a method of manufacturing the LCD panel. More particularly, exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to an LCD panel used in a transflective-type LCD device and a method of manufacturing the LCD panel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a liquid crystal display (“LCD”) device may be classified as a transmissive-type LCD device, a reflective-type LCD device or a transflective-type LCD device. Due to high visibility and color reproducibility of the transmissive-type LCD device in an indoor space, the transmissive-type LCD device has been widely used. However, the visibility of the transmissive-type LCD device is decreased outdoors, and power consumption of the transmissive-type LCD device is high.
On the other hand, the reflective-type LCD device has high visibility outdoors and does not employ an internal light source, for example, a backlight, so that the reflective-type LCD has the benefit of having low power consumption. However, the visibility of the reflective-type LCD device is decreased in a dark environment, such as an indoor space.
Thus, a transflective-type LCD device has been developed, which has the merits of 75
both the transmissive-type LCD and the reflective-type LCD device. However, the transflective-type LCD has detriments in its optical structure and manufacturing aspects as compared with the transmissive-type LCD and the reflective-type LCD device. That is, a light path passing through a liquid crystal layer only once in a transmissive area of the display; however, in a reflective area of the display incident light is reflected against a reflective plate back to the liquid crystal layer so that the light path in this part of the display passes through the liquid crystal layer at least twice. Thus, a difference of phase delay exists in the two areas.
In order to solve the above problems, the transflective-type LCD is designed so that a cell gap of a liquid crystal layer corresponding to the transmissive area is twice as large as that of a liquid crystal layer corresponding to the reflective area by using a twisted nematic (“TN”) mode. However, a liquid crystal film structure, which is used to adjust a light path of a reflective area and a transmissive area and narrow viewing angle of the TN mode, and a rubbing direction of an initial liquid crystal have a low-TN mode that is a TN mode of which an initial twist angle is small, so that transmissivity may be low. In order to overcome the above disadvantages, a vertical alignment mode may be used. However, transmittance versus applied voltage curve (V-T curve) characteristics and reflectivity versus applied voltage curve (V-R curve) characteristics corresponding to the reflective area and the transmissive area may need to be adjusted.
When thin-film transistors (“TFTs”) that are independently employed in the reflective area and the transmissive area to adjust V-T curve characteristics and V-R curve characteristics of the reflective and the transmissive areas, an aperture ratio may be decreased and manufacturing costs may be increased. Moreover, when an insulation layer is formed in the reflective area to decrease an electric field for driving liquid crystal molecules, a difference of threshold voltage may be generated at low gradation.