Patent ID: 7057682

Claim:
A liquid crystal display, comprising: a switched-in-plane (SIP) liquid crystal display (LCD) cell; and a first absorbing polarizer, comprising one or more layers including at least an absorbing polarizing layer, disposed on a first side of the LCD cell, the first absorbing polarizer and the LCD cell each lying parallel to an x-y plane defined by orthogonal x- and y-axes, a z-axis being orthogonal to both the x-axis and the y-axis, the first absorbing polarizer defining a transmission polarization direction for light transmitted through the first absorbing polarizer, the transmission polarization direction being parallel to the x-axis, wherein an x-z retardation coefficient, b xz total , is defined for the first absorbing polarizer as b xz total =Σ( n xi −n zi )1 is where n xi is the refractive index for light polarized parallel to the x-axis in the ith layer of the first absorbing polarizer, n zi is the refractive index for light polarized parallel to the z-axis in the ith layer of the first absorbing polarizer and 1 i is the thickness of the ith layer of the first absorbing polarizer in the z-direction, where i is an integer identifying different layers of the first absorbing polarizer, and b xz total =Σ(n xi −n zi )1 i is less than 20 nm.