Addressing of Liquid Crystal Displays with Metal‐Insulator‐Metal Pixel Switches

Metal‐Insulator‐Metal (MIM) devices are two terminal components with the structure of a capacitor. The importance of MIMs as pixel switches has, for displays with glass substrates, declined during the last ten years in favour of thin film transistors (TFTs). This chapter discusses the essentials of MIMs. The shortcomings of MIMs render their application for high resolution and high performance displays uncompetitive with TFT driven displays. For low‐resolution displays with a limited number of about 32–64 grey shades, MIMs are still a viable alternative, mainly due to their inexpensive manufacture and their low processing temperatures and are suitable for displays with plastic substrates. The main advantages of MIMs – the high aperture ratio, the low fabrication cost and the low process temperatures – are counterbalanced by the expensive higher voltage line drivers and by all the shortcomings limiting MIMs to applications with a low pixel density and a small number of grey shades.