Cell Gap Effects on Electro-Optic Performance of a Polymer-Stabilized Liquid Crystal Cell

We report cell gap effects on the electro-optic characteristics of a polymer-stabilized liquid crystal (LC) cell. We found that the transmittance of a polymer-stabilized LC cell can be increased by increasing the cell gap with little increase in response time. To better understand the cell gap effect on response time of the polymer-stabilized LC cell, we employed a simple method to evaluate and predict the response time by extracting the average distance between two neighboring bundles through experiment. The experimental results related to the response time of a polymer-stabilized LC cell matche well with the calculated results. We experimentally obtained turn-off switching that was three times faster than that of a conventional fringe-field switching cell at room temperature. Even at -20 °C, we achieved a relatively fast turn-off time of 18 ms.