Low Voltage and High Optical Efficiency Single-Cell-Gap Transflective Display Using a Blue-Phase Liquid Crystal

A single-cell-gap transflective display using a polymer-stabilized blue-phase liquid crystal is proposed. The periodic right triangle electrodes whose hypotenuses parallel to each other are formed. In the transmissive (T) region, the legs of the right triangle electrodes are opposite, which leads to a strong horizontal electric field. In the reflective (R) region, the hypotenuses parallel to each other, which results in a strong horizontal field component, which is uniformly distributed across the entire R-region. By optimizing the device parameters, well matched voltage-dependent transmittance and reflectance curves are achieved. This device exhibits low operating voltage (<;10 V), wide viewing angle, and high optical efficiency in both T- and R-regions. The potential application of the proposed device is emphasized.

I. Introduction

Polymer-Stabilized blue-phase liquid crystal [1]–[5] (BPLC) is rising up because of its attractive features, such as submillisecond gray-to-gray response time which reduces motion-image blurs and enables color-sequential display using LEDs, optically isotropic at the voltage-off state which leads to inherently wide and symmetric viewing angle, and no need for alignment layer which simplifies the fabrication processes. Nevertheless, two major challenges need to be overcome before widespread application: high operating voltage and low optical efficiency.