Surface Effects on the Optical Performance of Liquid Crystal Displays

In this paper, we report on our theoretical study on the effect of surface anchoring. Molecular dynamics as well as optical characteristics of PVA cell are computer-simulated with 3D-FEM numerical solver, TechWiz $LCD^{(R)}$. Although simulation parameters are the same except for the consideration of surface anchoring, the simulation reveals that optical transmittance is improved by more than 8% for the weak anchoring case with comparison to the strong anchoring case. Moreover, capacitance between pixel and common electrode is 7% lower for the strong anchoring than that for the weak anchoring. This implies that there exists an appreciable difference between the strong anchoring case and the weak anchoring case. It is very important to take the effect of surface anchoring into account in order to figure out the optical characteristics of an LCD cell more accurately.