Optical Compensation for Elimination of Off-Axis Light Leakage in a Homogeneously-Aligned Liquid Crystal Cell

Abstract

We propose an achromatic optical compensation method using uniaxial films to eliminate the off-axis light leakage in a homogeneously-aligned liquid crystal cell. In this technique, four uniaxial films with complementary dispersion characteristics are used to compensate for one another, resulting in achromatic effective phase retardation for off-axis angles. The retardation values are optimized with the aid of the Poincaré sphere and through numerical research. The contrast ratio of the proposed configuration for white light is higher than 2400:1 at a polar angle of ±60°, irrespective of the azimuthal angle.