Intrinsic Half-V-Mode Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Displays Fabricated Using Hybrid Alignment Exhibiting High Contrast Ratio and High Reliability without DC Voltage Application to Remove Layer Degeneracy and Their Electro-Optic Characteristics

Abstract

We developed a new polyimide, RN-1411, for the alignment of ferroelectric liquid crystal display (FLCD) and used it to fabricate an intrinsic FLCD showing half V-shaped switching called intrinsic H-V-mode FLCD. In this research, we particularly adopted a hybrid alignment method, typically the combination of a weak anchoring treatment for one substrate and a strong anchoring treatment for another substrate, that was actually performed by the combination of strong rubbing and weak rubbing, and the combination of photoalignment and rubbing using the same polyimide or that of rubbing and ion-beam alignment, where the same polyimide film or two different polyimide materials were used. It was shown that an intrinsic H-V-mode FLCD fabricated using this method has a defect-free molecular conformation that is realized without applying a DC voltage to remove degeneracy in the layer structure, which makes it possible to realize a high contrast ratio of 300:1 and high temperature reliability for a temperature cycling test.