Unusual residual time of image sticking under high-voltage electrostatic discharge (ESD) stress on liquid crystal (LC) cells has been observed. It was found that nanoscaled conductive particles doped in LC cells can significantly reduce the residual time of image sticking and the breakdown voltage of the LC cells. This finding can help to protect the doped cells from the attacks of ESD and thus to improve their displaying performance and reliability. In this study, nanoscaled tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) powders were uniformly mixed with high-resistance LC to form a suspension solution. In order to investigate other effects of ITO particles on the LC at high and low voltages, optical and electrical characteristics were compared for the doped cells and those samples without intentional doping. According to the measurement results, it is interesting to find that, except the breakdown characteristic, no other properties in the doped samples were changed with respect to the displaying functions under normal operational voltage.

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In our studies, it was confirmed that the cause of image sticking on liquid crystal (LC) cells is based on attacks of electrostatic discharge (ESD), which can be greatly relieved by doping with a small amount of tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) nanoparticles. Our proposed remedy allows the residual time of image sticking to be significantly reduced by more than an order and may protect the LC displays against any adverse ESD conditions, thus enhancing the overall display quality and reliability. In this study, conventional voltage-transmittance (V-T) characterization, voltage holding ratio (VHR) measurement, and ESD testing were employed to investigate the properties of the ITO-doped LCs. Based on our low voltage measurement results, it is interesting to find that ITO nanoparticles do not evidently alter the intrinsic properties of the LC. Namely, ITO additive initiates an early breakdown of the doped LC samples exposed to high electric fields. A model is proposed in this paper to depict the possible role of ITO particles applied in LCs. OPEN ACCESSCrystals 2013, 3 531

A laser method for the determination of the electron emission coeflicient y for t h e impact of slow laser-excited rare gas atoms Rg*[mps(m + I)p 3D,] on surfaces is described. It is based on controlled partial depletion of metastable Rg'[mp5(m + I)s3P,] atoms in a collimated beam by two-step laser photoionization in combination with saturated laser excitation of the metastable ('P,) atoms to the ('DJ level at the surface. T h e method simultaneously yields the coefficents.! for the metastable Rgr(3P2) and the laser-excited Rg'('0,) atoms. As an application, we report y values corresponding to the impact of Ar'(3P,, 3D,) and Kr*(3P,, 'D,) atoms on several gas-covered metal surfaces. The data show that the electron emission process involves Auger de-excitation and can be interpreted as Penning ionization of adsorbed molecules. Comparison of t h e y values for the four excited rare gas species shows a complex excitation energy dependence .