New concept of the wide viewing angle liquid crystal display without grayscale inversion

We analyzed the grayscale inversion mechanism of birefringent-type liquid crystal displays (LCDs). As a result, we propose a new LCD that prevents grayscale inversion, without using the multidomain alignment method. In addition, using this new method, we established the design rules for a compensation film that can compensate for the retardation of the black state from any viewing angle. We call this new LCD the OCP cell, which is an abbreviation for optically compensated parallel cell. This OCP is very promising as a next-generation LCD, due to its wide range of viewing angles, simple fabrication process, which is almost the same as that for a twisted nematic (TN) cell, and large aperture ratio.