Your Tablet Screen is Brought to You with the Aid of Carrots

Most of the people are looking forward to get some great deals on consumer electronic products like Smartphone, tablet, computer or TV during this holiday season. The common component among all these products, which help in enhancing the user experience, is the ‘display’. A German company named Merck KGaA is the world’s oldest chemicals and pharmaceuticals maker and it also happens to be the leading supplier of liquid crystals which are used in display. Currently Merck produces astonishingly more than 60% of all liquid crystals, which are sold on global scale. It is simply way ahead of its rivals companies from China and Japan in this area.

Liquid crystals bring better quality and definition in display

Horts Stegmeyer is a well known scientist and author of a variety of books on liquid crystals. He stated that millions of consumers who own the Smartphone, computer and televisions don’t know that their display contains the liquid crystals which helps in delivering high definition color reproduction. Stegemeyer further elaborates that almost 80% of fundamental research in the field of liquid crystals are done by Merck. Merck is also applauded for pioneering the innovation in this field.

The applications of liquid crystals are quite vast and it is even used as security holograms on the banknotes apart from being used in consumer electronics industry on wider scale.

What are liquid crystals? 

Liquid crystals were first discovered by two scientists namely Austrian Botanist Friedrich Reinitzer and the German physicist Otto Lehmann in 1888. These scientists were experimenting on the natural substances, which are found in the carrots, and they found a relatively strange phenomenon wherein few of the substances tend to have different melting points. At the arrival of first melting these natural substances simply melted into a cloudy liquid while reaching the second melting point cloudiness disappeared and a clear transparent liquid left behind. This particular new state of matter is known as ‘liquid crystal’, which has found dominant usage in the development of display panels.

At that time people didn’t know what to do with this new finding. Reinitzer and Lehmann sought the assistance of Merck in validating their finding and Merck started the production of liquid crystals way back in 1904.

Merck still pioneering the research in liquid crystal field

Merck family had kept a firm hold in keeping the research alive in the field of liquid crystal, which helped consumers in having magnificent displays in their phones, tablets, televisions and much more. At the beginning of the 21st century cathode ray tube started to phase out and finally be replaced by the flat panels. It was then Merck bet on aggressively researching and polishing the liquid crystals paved their way to gain some credible profit.

The slow and steady rise in the Smartphones and tablets began a trend where people were only looking flat panel display in more and more bigger terms. Merck has dominated the liquid crystal market and business for a long time and it generated huge profit from which are used to finance research for another screen technology called OLED.