LIGHT DIFFUSING PLATE, OPTICAL ELEMENT AND LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY DEVICE

摘要

PURPOSE: To provide a light diffusing plate being excellent in terms of usefulness resulting from easiness of manufacture and excellent thermal and chemical stability, being capable of improving brightness by supplying linearly polarized light which reduces absorption loss caused by a polarizing plate and also hardly causing any coloring problem, also being applicable to a reflective liquid crystal display device or the like and further being excellent in polarization characteristics. CONSTITUTION: In the light diffusing plate having micro-regions contained and dispersed in a birefringent film and having birefringent characteristics different from those of the birefringent film, the micro-region is composed of a side chain type liquid crystal polymer containing a monomer unit (a) including a liquid crystalline fragment side chain and a monomer unit (b) including a non-liquid crystalline fragment side chain. At the same time, the light diffusing plate is characterized by having >=0.03 difference in refractive indexes (Δn1) between the birefringent film and the micro-region in a direction perpendicularly intersecting the axial direction exhibiting maximum transmittance of the linearly polarized light and further by having difference in refractive indexes (Δn2) in the axial direction with maximum transmittance <=80% ofΔn1.