Mitsubishi Rayon Co., Ltd, announces that it has completed the construction of additional production facilities for its DIAART prism sheets for LCDs. Full-scale operation of the new production facilities started in June, and this will boost the Company’s total DIAART output capacity by 50% from the current equivalent of 30 million 15-inch sheets per annum, to 45 million sheets.

Background to expansion of production facilities
The production and sale of DIAART prism sheets for LCDs was commenced in April 2003. At the time, this was a completely new type of prism sheet, as the use of one sheet of the material increased the brightness of a backlight unit by 30%. Market reaction was thus very favorable.
  The main area of application of DIAART is LCDs for notebook computers, cell phones, and computer game machines, and demand is currently on an expansion trend, with a brisk inflow of inquiries from LCD manufacturers continuing. To deal with the growth in demand, the management of Mitsubishi Rayon completed the construction of additional production facilities one year ahead of schedule.

Description of prism sheets
As liquid crystals do not emit light themselves, LCDs employ a backlight unit as a light source. In the case of 17-inch LCD screens or smaller, such as are used in notebook PCs, cell phones, and so on, compact “edge-light-type” backlight units are used. The prism sheets in these units play a crucial role in spreading the brightness evenly out across the entire surface of the screen.

Features of DIAART
DIAART is manufactured using precision injection molding technology for acrylic resins and our expertise in designing optical devices. The employment of these state-of-the-art technologies allows the optimization of the prism’s shape, making possible a very high degree of efficiency in the focusing and concentration of light. LCDs employing our new backlight system, which, in turn, uses specially designed light-guiding plates compatible with DIAART, achieve a level of luminance 30% higher than LCDs employing our previous products. Moreover, whereas with our previous products two sheets were required, the same job can be done by only one sheet of DIAART. The new system thus makes an invaluable contribution to the creation of lighter and thinner LCDs.