In my office today, there was strong sunlight shining onto my LCD screen. I could see that in patches, the image became quite a bit darker than the rest. I could return the image to normal my pressing my hand on the area for a minute. This seemed to be a heatsinking effect.
The LCD screen was getting very hot. It was on the threshold of being painful to press my fingertips against it. With a thermometer with a blackened tip, I could measure around 45 degrees C, but the screen could have been higher.
My question is what happens to the screen to cause the dark patches when the screen gets hot?
Best Answer
Quoting from Vartech Systems, a supplier of rugged displays:
Basically, the crystal orientation in the liquid crystal gets randomized, and the effect is that light can't pass through, so the image is darkened. I suspect that as the temperature straddles that operating temperature limit you may get a dim image where some crystals are still more or less in alignment while others are randomized.
Reading a bit further on,
Most computer LCDs are positive image displays, and thus you wind up with your dark display.
The site goes on to note that temperatures above 100°C (212°F) can permanently damage the coating on LCD displays, though Samsung claims that storing your display at temperatures above 45°C (113°F) can damage it, so it's possible that Vartech's 100°C threshold is specifically a property of their ruggedized displays.
Vartech also mentions that as temperatures drop the viscosity of the LC increases, resulting in slower response times (which will first manifest as "ghosting", and further as very slow image updates/transitions, like a bad PowerPoint slideshow in slow-mo). The site doesn't make mention of whether excessively low temperatures can permanently damage a display, but the line
suggests that it is at least theoretically possible for extremely low temperatures to cause irreversible damage.