Patent ID: 7576820

Claim:
A liquid crystal display apparatus, comprising: a liquid crystal cell in a vertical alignment mode; polarizers provided on both sides of said liquid crystal cell; quarter wavelength layers provided between said respective polarizers and said liquid crystal cell, each of said quarter wavelength layers having a retardation in an in-plane direction that is substantially set at a quarter wavelength of a wavelength of transmitted light; a phase difference layer, provided between at least one of said quarter wavelength layers and said liquid crystal cell, which has main refraction index in a normal direction nz 1 that is smaller than main refraction indexes in in-plane directions nx 1 and ny 1 ; and a compensation layer, provided at least between said the polarizer and quarter wavelength layer on the side of said phase difference layer, having main refraction index in a normal direction nz 2 that is greater than main refraction indexes in in-plane directions nx 2 and ny 2 , so that the quarter wavelength layer is sandwiched between (i) the phase difference layer having index nz 1 smaller than nx 1 and ny 1 , and (ii) the compensation layer which has index nz 2 greater than nx 2 and ny 2 , wherein first and second of the phase difference layers are provided between said respective quarter wavelength layers and the liquid crystal cell, have different main refraction indexes nx 1 and ny 1 , respectively; and wherein nx 1 axes of said phase difference layers cross each other at a right angle, while ny 1 axes of said phase difference layers cross each other at a right angle.