1. General description
The PCF8576C is a peripheral device which interfaces to almost any Liquid Crystal
Display (LCD)
1
with low multiplex rates. It generates the drive signals for any static or
multiplexed LCD containing up to four backplanes and up to 40 segments and can easily
be cascaded for larger LCD applications. The PCF8576C is compatible with most
microcontrollers and communicates via the two-line bidirectional I
2
C-bus. Communication
overheads are minimized by a display RAM with auto-incremented addressing and by
hardware subaddressing.
For a selection of NXP LCD segment drivers, see Table 24 on page 52
.
2. Features and benefits
Single-chip LCD controller and driver
40 segment drives:
Up to twenty 7-segment alphanumeric characters
Up to ten 14-segment alphanumeric characters
Any graphics of up to 160 elements
Versatile blinking modes
No external components required (even in multiple device applications)
Selectable backplane drive configuration: static, 2, 3, or 4 backplane multiplexing
Selectable display bias configuration: static,
1
⁄
2
, or
1
⁄
3
Internal LCD bias generation with voltage-follower buffers
40 4-bit RAM for display data storage
Auto-incremented display data loading across device subaddress boundaries
Display memory bank switching in static and duplex drive modes
Wide logic LCD supply range:
From 2 V for low-threshold LCDs
Up to 6 V for high-threshold twisted nematic LCDs
Low power consumption
May be cascaded for large LCD applications (up to 2560 elements possible)
No external components required
Separate or combined LCD and logic supplies
Optimized pinning for plane wiring in both single and multiple PCF8576C applications
Power-saving mode for extremely low power consumption in battery-operated and
telephone applications
PCF8576C
Universal LCD driver for low multiplex rates
Rev. 13 — 16 December 2013 Product data sheet
1. The definition of the abbreviations and acronyms used in this data sheet can be found in Section 20.
