10 Years Ultra-Brightness FFS

Mobile devices have radically changed our day-to-day lives and fundamentally altered our communication culture. When people swipe their fingers over the touchscreen of their mobile device, they set into motion an array of liquid crystal molecules most likely produced by EMD Electronics. Only a tenth of a gram of such a liquid crystal mixture is needed to light up a smartphone or tablet.

Yet mobile devices these days must have more than vivid, high-resolution displays – they also need to consume as little energy as possible.
The most important factor to increase energy efficiency is the transmittance of the display.
To meet this challenge and through our major role in continuous research, we enabled the innovative liquid crystal technology known as UB-FFS.

UB-FFS stands for Ultra-Brightness Fringe-Field Switching and is one of the liquid crystal display (LCD) modes, which was launched 10 years ago in 2014.

UB-FFS technology has won several awards, including the 2014 Meyer-Galow Prize for chemistry, the 2015 German Innovation Award, and the 2015 SID Gold Award in the category “Display Component of the Year”.

Let’s say you’re watching a video on a display with the brightness turned all the way up, which plays a significant role of a mobile device's power consumption. This is where UB-FFS comes into play. UB is short for "ultra brightness", called such because it allows the liquid crystal layer to transmit up to 15% more of the display's backlighting. What's more, this "extra" light is utilized to provide superior image resolution. Devices with UB-FFS consume less energy and have a longer battery life due to the possibility for low refresh rate driving. This technology also improves display quality, which allows users to read the screen more easily from a variety of angles.

Today, this technology is used in most high-end products, especially in the top-of-the-line tablets, notebooks, smartphones and monitors.

In order to expand the application of this technology, we are working closely between our headquarters in Germany and our R&D centers in China, Korea and Taiwan.