PSV-FLC Fabricated Using Photo-Alignment Technique

Abstract

Polymer-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystals (PS-FLCs), in which a photocurable mesogenic monomer is doped into an FLC and UV photociring is carried out in the SmA phase at the quiescent condition, may show monostable and V-shaped electrooptical characteristics with a grayscale capability without a threshold.[1, 2] The PS-FLCs with V-shaped electrooptical characteristics are usually called PSV-FLCs. PSV-FLCs are attractive for a next generation of LC display having high performances such as high-quality moving video image and very low power consumption, because of their unique characteristics such as high-speed response and wide viewing angle. However, there is a fundamental problem for their display application. Although the rubbing technique is conventionally used for the LC molecular alignment, the rubbing scratches form on the alignment film surface. In the case of nematic LC, the rubbing scratch pattern of the LC molecular alignment texture fall into obscurity to some extent because of relatively easy self-assembly of the molecular orientation. On the other hand, the smectic LC forms a layer structure of the molecular alignment, and is relatively similar to crystal. Therefore, the rubbing scratch pattern is clearly observed, and then, gives rise to the optical leakage. In this research, to suppress the optical leakage and increase the contrast ratio, we introduce the photo-alignment technique to PSV-FLC.