Driving matrix liquid crystal displays

Liquid crystal displays had a humble beginning with wrist watches in the seventies. Continued research and development in this multi-disciplinary field have resulted in displays with increased size and complexity. After three decades of growth in performance, LCDs now offer a formidable challenge to the cathode ray tubes (CRT). A major contribution to the growth of LCD technology has come from the developments in addressing techniques used for driving matrix LCDs. There are several approaches like passive matrix addressing, active matrix addressing and plasma addressing to drive a matrix display. Passive matrix LCD has a simple construction and uses the intrinsic non-linear characteristic of the LCD for driving. Departure from conventional line by line addressing of a passive matrix has resulted in improved performance of the display. Orthogonal functions have played a crucial role in the development of passive matrix addressing. Simple orthogonal functions that are useful for driving a matrix LCD are introduced. The basics of driving several rows simultaneously (multi-line addressing) are discussed by drawing analogies from multiplexing in communication. The impact of multi-line addressing techniques on the performance of the passive matrix LCDs in comparison with the conventional technique will be discussed.     

Nanoparticles-doped guest-host liquid crystal displays

The technique, nanoparticles-induced vertical alignment (NIVA), was applied to fabricate a guest-host liquid crystal display (GH-LCD) without conventional alignment layers. The GH-LCD produced by NIVA exhibited a high reflectance of approximately 59% in the voltage-off state and a low threshold voltage of approximately 2.1 V(rms). NIVA is very suitable to be applied for fabricating a plastic LCD requiring a low temperature process, and a flexible timepiece by using NIVA was demonstrated.     

X-ray study of ferroelectric liquid crystal

Measurements of X-ray scattering intensity from a ferroelectric liquid crystal are carefully carried out to clarify the mechanism of the ferroelectric phase transition. The temperature dependences of the scattering intensity and the tilt angle of the molecules in the ferroelectric smectic C phase are discussed on the base of Landau's theory.     

Advancements of vertically aligned liquid crystal displays

This review describes the recent advancements in the field of the vertical aligned (VA) liquid crystal displays. The process and formation of different vertical alignment modes such as conventional VA, patterned VA, multi-domain VA, and polymer stabilised VA etc are widely discussed. Vertical alignment of liquid crystal due to nano particle dispersion in LC host, bifunctional PR-SAM formed by silane coupling reaction to oxide surfaces, azo dye etc., are also highlighted and discussed. Overall, the article highlights the advances in the research of vertical aligned liquid crystal in terms of their scientific and technological aspects.     

Displaying gray shades in liquid crystal displays

Quality of image in a display depends on the contrast, colour, resolution and the number of gray shades. A large number of gray shades is necessary to display images without any contour lines. These contours are due to limited number of gray shades in the display causing abrupt changes in grayness of the image, while the original image has a gradual change in brightness. Amplitude modulation has the capability to display a large number of gray shades with minimum number of time intervals [1,2]. This paper will cover the underlying principle of amplitude modulation, some variants and its extension to multi-line addressing. Other techniques for displaying gray shades in passive matrix displays are reviewed for the sake of comparison.     

Spatial light modulators using ferroelectric liquid crystal

Basic structures and functions of optically addressed spatial light modulators (SLMs) are discussed in the context of system applications. The most important functions imposed on spatial light modulators are those of image acceptance and transducers. SLMs using ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) satisfy essential requirements for high levels of resolution, sensitivity and response speed. We specifically surveyed the current performance of bipolar-operational spatial light modulators (BSLMs) that sufficiently exploit the bistability of FLC to output reversibly positive and negative images and to store them. The high performance of BSLMs makes them useful for many optical applications including image processing and real-time holography.     

Dielectric spectroscopy of a high-polarization ferroelectric liquid crystal

Dielectric spectroscopy investigations in the frequency range 50?Hz to 1?MHz have been carried out on a new ferroelectric liquid-crystalline material (S-(-)-4-(2-n-hexylpropionyloxy)biphenyl-4′-(3-methyl-4-decyloxy)benzoate) possessing a relatively large spontaneous polarization (P _s?～?240?nC?cm^?2) and containing a lateral methyl group on the aromatic ring of the alkoxybenzoate unit. The effect of temperature on the dielectric relaxation modes has been investigated in the SmC* and N* phases. From dielectric dispersion data, relaxation frequency and dielectric strength of all detected relaxation modes have been evaluated and discussed. A new surface-like mode of relaxation frequency ～11?kHz and dielectric strength 3.8, is seen to appear in the SmC* phase.     

129Xe diffusion in a ferroelectric liquid crystal

Measurements of ¹²⁹Xe self-diffusion and shielding as a function of temperature were performed to cover the different phases of the ferroelectric liquid crystal FELIX-R&;D. The shielding data prove untwisting of the helical structure in the nematic phase (i.e. non-chiral nematic phase) of FELIX-R&;D. Self-diffusion measurements were carried out in a direction parallel to the main magnetic field of the NMR spectrometer. However, in order to yield the anisotropy of the xenon self-diffusion tensor a few measurements also were performed in the perpendicular direction. A special technique, based on the observation of the second spin echo instead of the conventional first one, was applied to avoid convection problems. The experiments reveal all the phase transitions and a continuous decrease in the self-diffusion constant along the external magnetic field, D‖, when moving from the isotropic to the smectic C? phase. The respective activation energy E‖ appears to vary remarkably, however, being about the same in the isotropic and smectic C? phases. In the smectic mesophases significantly faster xenon self-diffusion was detected in the perpendicular direction than in the parallel direction. The detected self-diffusion constant D ⊥ in the perpendicular direction seems to remain almost constant in the smectic mesophases and close to the value of the self-diffusion constant in the isotropic phase. The results are in agreement with the structural features of smectic phases and indicate redistribution of xenon atoms towards the interlayer space of smectic mesophases.     

Dielectric and electro-optical properties of dye doped ferroelectric liquid crystal

Addition of dye in ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) results in change in many properties of FLCs which depend upon some basic properties of pure FLCs, dye molecular structure and its concentration in pure FLC. Present Letter reports dielectric and electro-optical studies of pure and dyed FLCs for this aspect.     

Anchoring energy and orientational elasticity of a ferroelectric liquid crystal

The dielectric susceptibility of a helix-free ferroelectric liquid crystal layer has been experimentally and theoretically studied as a function of the layer thickness. The investigation has been performed on the inner branch of the polarization hysteresis loop, in the region of a linear dependence of the polarization on the electric field. The experimental results are explained using the notion of effective layer thickness, which involves the characteristic distance ?? over which the orienting effect of interfaces is operative. Comparison of the experimental data and theoretical results made it possible to estimate this distance as ?? = 41 ??m and evaluate the anchoring energy (W = 2.8 × 10^?3?1.1 × 10^?2 J/m²) and the intralayer elastic constant (K?? ?? 1 × 10^?8?3 × 10^?7 N).     

Helicoidal distributed-feedback cavity action in a ferroelectric liquid crystal

Second-Harmonic (SH) generation was observed in homeotropically aligned ferroelectric liquid-crystal cells using fundamental light propagating along the helicoidal axis. Relatively strong SH light was observed in the helicoidal structure when the optical pitch was nearly the same as the SH-light wavelength, though, otherwise, the cancellation of the generated SH light by the helicoid results in negligibly weak SH intensity. Because the observed SH light is independent of the cell thickness, the SH light is attributed to the one generated from the surface region and the SH light generated inside the cell is confined and lost by the helicoid. This phenomenon indicates the helicoidal Distributed-FeedBack (DFB) cavity action and suggests the possibility of the helicoidal DFB laser using dye-doped ferroelectric liquid-crystal cells.     

Changes in material parameters for dye-doped ferroelectric liquid crystal

Addition of the dichroic anthraquinone dye molecules in pure ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) matrix results in many improvement in the various vital parameters of the pure FLC. However, addition of anthraquinone dye molecules in pure FLC matrix is not advantageous every time. There are certain constraints which are crucial for the application of these systems into many devices. In this article, we have discussed the concentration and temperature dependence of vital properties of dye-doped FLC. In this study there is improvement in contrast ratio by dye doping due to enhancement in plane switching for dye-doped FLC.     

Molecular structure and physical parameters of some ferroelectric liquid crystal systems

We investigate thermodynamic properties and spontaneous polarization of ferroelectric liquid crystal (SmC^*LC) systems: smectic C matrix + chiral adding (ChA). The fact of existence of an optimum concentration of ChA, for which the studied SmC^*LC systems have the maximum value of spontaneous polarization, and a certain concentration, at which the phase transition of the chiral tilted smectic C phase to the smectic A phase occurs, is established. Temperature dependence curves for the free energy, configuration energy, specific heat, and the orientational order parameter are calculated in the temperature range of existence of liquid crystal mesophases. The curves are in good agreement with the experimentally observed trends of the SmC^*LC properties.     

铁电液晶光寻址空间光调制器性能分析

针对氢化非晶硅/铝/铁电液晶结构的光寻址空间光调制器（OASLM）,依据其等效电路模型,利用Pspice和Matlab软件对其分辨率、响应速度、对比度及灰度响应等性能进行了分析。结果表明:在铁电液晶（FLC）层厚度一定的情况下,减小光敏感层（a-Si:H层）的厚度可以提高FLC-OASLM的调制传递函数,从而提高分辨率;在其他参量一定的情况下,FLC-OASLM的响应速度随写入光光强增大而增大（写入光从0.08 mW/cm2增大到10 mW/cm2,延迟时间减小110 s,上升时间减小154 s）,随擦除光光强增大而减小（擦除光从0增大到1 mW/cm2,延迟时间增大41 s,上升时间仅增加3 s）;FLC-OASLM的对比度随控制光光强增大而增大,最终趋于一个稳定值21∶1;在其他参量不变时,随着擦除光光强的增大,输出光响应呈现等级下降,且发现当擦除光光强达到一定值（3 mW/cm2）后,擦除光的改变主要影响下降时间而对上升时间几乎无影响;合理设计激励源信号波形,可以得到超过十级灰度输出,表明擦除光具有实现FLC OASLM的灰度响应的功能。     

Ultraviolet visible spectroscopy of CdS nano-wires doped ferroelectric liquid crystal

We prepared CdS nano-wires with its breadth varying in the order of 30-40 nm with good uniformity. The prepared nano-wires were mixed with ferroelectric liquid crytal (FLC; FELIX-017/100) in a suitable proportion and then spin coated on a SiO₂ spin coated glass substrates. With the variation of rpm speed of the spin coater we obtained significant UV-vis spectroscopic information in comparison with pure FLC and pure nano-wires, those also spin coated on SiO₂ coated glass plates. Although we did not receive any significant shifting of transition of peaks, but absorbance changed remarkably, and also the calculated band gap energy for different composition were calculated from UV-vis spectra.     

Optical properties of a QHQ ferroelectric liquid crystal phase modulator

A half-wave plate sandwiched between two-quarter-wave plates (a QHQ) may be used as a variable linear retarder. We describe some new features of the optical properties of such a device and present results of an experimental demonstration of a ferroelectric liquid crystal phase-only modulator based on the above principle.     

Leakage of light in liquid crystal displays and birefringent thin film compensators

This paper elucidates the physical origin of leakage of light in the dark state of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and describes birefringent thin film compensators to mitigate the problems. There are two fundamental sources of leakage of light in LCDs. They are the leakage of light through a pair of ideal crossed polarizers, and the leakage of light due to elliptical state of polarization after transmitting through the liquid crystal (LC) cell. The leakage of light in the dark state leads to poor contrast ratios and color instability, particularly at large viewing angles. The paper then describes the employment of sixth-wave (λ/6) plates as well as various wave plates that function as birefringent compensators for eliminating the leakage of light in LCDs.