Wide-Viewing Display Configuration of Heilix-Deformed Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals

We propose on a novel vertical configuration (VC) for a helix-deformed ferroelectric liquid crystal (HDFLC) display that has fast response, high contrast, analog gray scale capability, and wide-viewing characteristics. In contrast to a conventional HDFLC in a planar geometry, smectic layers arrange themselves parallel to the substrates, and thus, extremely uniform alignment of molecules in large area is naturally achieved in our new configuration without additional processes such as the rubbing and/or electric field treatment. Moreover, with a proper design of electrode patterns on the same substrate, multidomain switching is easily realized without employing any complex process of alignment. Our new VC-HDFLC is expected to provide a viable technology to produce a next-generation large area LCD suitable for processing the dynamic image at a video-rate.