Several liquid crystal (LC) modes, such as twisted nematic, vertical alignment (VA), and in-plane switching, have been
in competition with each other in the LC display market. Among them, the VA mode has been widely used because of
the high contrast ratio. Since the LC molecules are aligned perpendicular to the substrate in the initial state, an excellent
dark state can be obtained at normal viewing direction. However, effective phase retardation of LC layer at oblique
viewing direction differs greatly from that at normal viewing direction. Thus, gamma distortion phenomenon occurs at
oblique view direction. To reduce the gamma shift in the VA mode at oblique viewing direction, multi-domain VA
modes were proposed. Although gamma shifts of these modes are smaller than that of the single domain VA mode, the
problems still remain. Recently, several technologies for 8-domain alignment have been proposed to decrease the gamma
shift at off-axis. However, additional driving circuits are required to realize the eight-domain structure. In this paper we
report technologies for the multi-domain VA mode with no additional driving circuits. By using the proposed
technologies, we can obtain the dual threshold voltage in each sub-pixel to realize the multi-domain VA mode with no
decrease of contrast ratio.
We propose a method for fast switching of nematic liquid crystals with neither alignment materials nor alignment process. A three-terminal electrode structure is used to apply in-plane and vertical electric fields to randomly-aligned liquid crystals. A vertical field is applied to align liquid crystals vertically for the dark state, whereas an in-plane field is applied to align liquid crystals homogeneously for the bright state. We obtained the turn-on time of 1.2 ms and turn-off time of 0.5 ms in the three-terminal electrode structure with neither alignment materials nor alignment process. However, three-terminal electrode structure with neither alignment material nor alignment process shows low transmittance. For higher transmittance, we mixed reactive mesogen and nano-particles with anisotropic molecular shape to liquid crystals. As a result, we obtained a transmittance similar to the conventional fringe field switching mode and achieved the total response time of less than 3 ms.
In this paper, we propose new pixel structures for high transmittance in the patterned vertical alignment mode.
We formed the protrusion or the slit on the top substrate to reduce the width of disclination lines at the
domain boundaries.
We studied two types of bistable liquid crystal devices that can be operated in the memory mode as well as in
the dynamic mode. One of them is a pixel-isolated twist-splay nematic LC cell that has two stable states of π-
twist and splay. Polymer walls are formed at pixel boundaries by anisotropic phase separation between
nematic liquid crystals and reactive mesogens. Operation in the memory mode can be achieved through
bistable switching between the splay and π-twisted states. The other one is a bistable twisted-nematic mode
that has two stable states of -π/2 and +π/2 twist. Three-terminal electrodes are used to apply both vertical and
in-plane electric field to both devices. The proposed bistable modes has an infinite memory time and the fast
transition time compared to other bistable liquid crystal modes.
We propose a chiral-nematic liquid crystal (CN-LC) device that reflects the infrared light, where the planar
state is transparent over the entire visible wavelengths and the focal conic state scatters the light
achromatically. The proposed CN-LC device can be operated at a low voltage because of the long pitch. A
liquid crystal display (LCD) switchable between reflective and transmissive modes can be realized by
stacking a CN-LC layer and a nematic LC layer.
We propose a fast switching method for a homogeneous-aligned liquid crystal (LC) cell using 3-terminal
electrode structure. LCs are vertical-aligned momentarily before they are in-plane switched to show a bright
state, by which LCs are in a transient state rather than the stable state. The turn-on can be faster, whereas LCs
start to relax along the rubbing direction so that the relaxation is optically hidden. The turn-off time of about
0.6 ms could be obtained. Experimental results show that fast gray-to-gray response as well as turn-on and
turn-off can be achieved by using the proposed switching method.
A novel method for switching the viewing-angle of a liquid crystal display is proposed by using a polymernetworked
liquid crystal cell in combination with a collimated backlight system. The bright state for a wide
viewing-angle is obtained aligning liquid crystals randomly in polymer-networked structure, which diffuses a
collimated backlight. The liquid crystals homogeneous-aligned by in-plane switching are operated as the
bright state for a narrow viewing-angle since a collimated backlight passes through the liquid crystal layer
intactly. It is demonstrated experimentally that the viewing-angle can be controlled omni-directionally
without an additional panel or an additional backlight system.
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