Light guide plate, wiring module and electronic appliance

#The present invention relates to light guide plates, wiring modules, and electronic appliances. In particular, the present invention relates to a light guide plate that is assembled into an electronic appliance such as a mobile-phone and used to back-light input keys, a liquid crystal display screen, and so forth, a wiring module in which the light guide plate is used, and an electronic appliance in which the light guide plate or the wiring module is used.

#To date, in an electronic appliance such as a mobile-phone, a plurality of light sources such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been disposed at the back of input keys in order to back-light the input keys and a liquid crystal display screen. However, more recently, a light guide plate is used as the light source for backlight. Here, the light guide plate back-lights the input keys and the liquid crystal display screens by directing thereinto illuminating light from the light sources such as LEDs through a side surface thereof and emitting the light through a main surface thereof. With this light guide plate, the number of light sources such as LEDs can be decreased to about one to two, thereby reducing electric power consumption and achieving reduction in thickness.

#In order to further reduce electric power consumption, improvement of light use efficiency is required. For this purpose, a light guide plate provided with a light emitting structure in a surface thereof has also been proposed (Patent Literature 1). In addition, in order to improve combining efficiency (incident efficiency) of illuminating light from a light source to a light guide plate even when the thickness of the light guide plate is reduced, a light guide plate having a light-receiving unit, which is enlarged in a tapered shape to the size of an LED used as the light source, on a side surface thereof has also been proposed (Patent Literature 2).

#FIG. 1 is a perspective view schematically illustrating a structure of a mobile-phone according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

#FIG. 2 is an enlarged plan view schematically illustrating an input module of the mobile-phone illustrated in FIG. 1.

#FIG. 3 is a schematic sectional view of the input module taken along line II-II in FIG. 2.

#Hereafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described. In the description of the drawings, like elements are denoted by like reference numerals and redundant explanations are thus omitted. In addition, dimensional ratios in the drawings do not necessarily coincide with those in the description.

#FIG. 1 is a perspective view schematically illustrating a structure of a mobile-phone according to the first embodiment of the present invention. As illustrated in FIG. 1, a mobile-phone 10 includes an input part 13 for inputting information to be communicated and a display part 12 for displaying a variety of information. The display part 12 is rotatably connected to the input part 13 with a hinge part 14 so as to have an openable and closable structure (folding structure). The input part 13 includes a microphone 17 at a position opposite the hinge part 14, and the display part 12 includes a speaker 16 at a position opposite the hinge part 14.

#The input part 13 includes a plurality of input keys 21 that are arranged therein and define an input module 20. Numbers and characters are printed on the input keys 21 in order to input a variety of information. The display part 12 includes a liquid crystal display device 15 in order to display a variety of information.