Patent ID: 8115879

Claim:
A liquid crystal display comprising: a driving substrate on which transparent pixel electrodes are formed; a counter substrate on which a counter electrode is formed; and a liquid crystal material disposed between the driving substrate and the counter substrate, molecules of the liquid crystal material being oriented orthogonally to the substrates, wherein, the driving substrate has pixel capacitors and pixel transistors formed thereon, the pixel capacitors being disposed under the pixel electrodes, each pixel capacitor has a pair of pixel capacitor electrodes disposed over each other and a dielectric substance disposed between the pair of pixel capacitor electrodes, the pixel transistors acting to write signal voltages to the pixel electrodes and to the pixel capacitors, each pixel electrode has a slit formed over the pair of pixel capacitor electrodes of a respective one of the pixel capacitors to orient the molecules of the liquid crystal material to be (a) orthogonal to the substrates when no voltage is applied to the pixel electrode and (b) non-orthogonal to the substrates when a respective signal voltage is written to the respective one of the pixel electrodes, each pixel electrode also having another slit which together with the slit formed over the pixel electrodes of a respective one of the pixel capacitors divides the pixel into three parts, one of the pair of pixel capacitor electrodes of each of the pixel capacitors reflects light and forms a reflective region, a thickness of portions of the liquid crystal material present in the reflective regions is greater than half of a thickness of portions of the liquid crystal material present in transmissive regions other than the reflective regions, and in each of the pixel electrodes, the area of the slit formed over the pixel capacitor is equal to or greater than half of the two-dimensional area of the pixel capacitor.