Fabrication and electro-optic characteristics of polymer-stabilized V-mode ferroelectric liquid crystal display and intrinsic H-V-mode ferroelectric liquid crystal displays: their application to field matrix sequential fullcolor active matrix liquid crystal displays

We fabricate ferroelectric liquid crystal display (FLCD) devices exhibiting a thresholdless V-shaped switching by adopting a mesogenic liquid crystal polymer stabilization and also FLCDs exhibiting half-V-shaped switching using an undoped FLC material. These FLCDs are respectively called polymer-stabilization (PS)-V-mode FLCDs and intrinsic H-V-mode FLCDs. By using especially developed polyimide materials such as RN-1199 and RN-1411 series (from Nissan Chem., Ind.) for the surface alignment and together with a well-controlled rubbing technique, photoalignment, and ion-beam alignment, we succeed in fabricating zigzag defect-free FLCDs. In particular, the PS-V-mode FLCD fabricated in this way exhibits continuous operation with a high contrast ratio of 700:1, and the intrinsic H-V-mode FLCD has good temperature stability by using the combined alignment technique. Particularly, a field-sequential full-color (FS-FC) LCD using PS-V-mode FLCD shows good long-term stability for a continual operation. Using these FLCDs, we also develop several prototype models of FS-FC active matrix LCDs with the specification of video graphics arrays (VGAs) and extended graphics arrays (XGAs), where we take advantage of their high-speed response (time constants 100 to 500 mus). (C) 2004 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.