TFT LCD

TFT (Thin-Film Transistor) describes how a modern LCD panel is driven, not the liquid-crystal alignment mode that determines its color and viewing-angle behavior. One transistor sits behind each subpixel, switching and holding the voltage that controls how much light passes through -- a one-way electrical behavior that prevents the crosstalk and fading between refreshes that plagued older passive-matrix LCDs. TN, VA, and IPS panels all use a TFT active-matrix backplane; the difference between them lies entirely in the liquid-crystal layer sitting on top of it.

The technology traces back further than most people expect: RCA's Paul Weimer built the first working thin-film transistor in 1962, and RCA's Bernard Lechner proposed the concept of a TFT-driven active-matrix LCD in 1968. It was a separate team -- T. Peter Brody and Fang-Chen Luo at Westinghouse, not RCA -- who built the first functional cadmium-selenide TFT-LCD around 1972-1973, with Brody coining the term "active matrix" in 1975. Commercial adoption in TVs and monitors escalated through the 1990s and 2000s as manufacturing matured, and TFT-driven LCDs are now the dominant display technology across phones, monitors, and TVs.