Fast grey-to-grey switching of a homogeneously aligned liquid crystal device

Abstract

We propose a method for fast grey-to-grey (GTG) switching of a homogeneously aligned liquid crystal (LC) cell. Homogeneously aligned LCs are instantly vertically aligned by applying a vertical electric field for a short time before switching to a target grey level. Once the LCs are vertically aligned, we apply an in-plane voltage higher than the data voltage that corresponds to a target grey level, while maintaining the vertical electric field. Then, at the time the vertical field is removed, we apply a data voltage required for switching to the target grey level. We experimentally demonstrated GTG switching of a homogeneously aligned LC cell, which is 11 times faster than a fringe-field switching cell.