Photoalignment of Liquid Crystal on Silicon Microdisplay

Reflective mode liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) microdisplay is the major technology that can produce extremely high-resolution displays. A very large number of pixels can be packed onto the CMOS circuit with integrated drivers that can be projected to any size screen. Large size direct-view thin film transistor (TFT) LCDs becomes very difficult to make and to drive as the information content increases. However, the existing LC alignment technology for the LCoS cell fabrication is still the mechanical rubbing method, which is prone to have minor defects that are not visible normally but can be detrimental if projected to a large screen. In this paper, application of photo-alignment to LCoS fabrication is presented. The alignment is done by three-step exposure process. A MTN $90^{\circ}$ mode is chose as to evaluate the performance of this technique. The comparison with rubbing mode shows the performance of photo-alignment is comparable and even better in some aspect, such as sharper RVC curve and higher contrast ratio.