Bistable liquid crystal displays

Abstract

Bistable liquid crystal displays offer many benefits, including the ability to display high levels of image content using passive matrix addressing and without thin-film transistors, ultralow power reflective displays with image storage that only consume power with changes to image, and flexible plastic displays capable of showing color images. The topic is diverse, involving nematic, smectic, and cholesteric liquid crystals; retardation, anisotropic absorption, scattering, and selectively reflecting optical modes; dielectrically, ferroelectrically, and flexoelectrically driven electrooptic effects; bistable textures stabilized by monostable surfaces or smectic layers and bistable surfaces; and applications ranging from electronic skins to high-definition television. Many different bistable display modes have been suggested over the past four decades, and this chapter concentrates on the bistable twisted nematic, surface-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs), scattering smectic A, grating-aligned zenithal bistable display, and bistable cholesteric displays (BCDs).