Smectic LCD modes

Abstract

In this article, we discuss display modes based on smectic liquid crystals with special focus on chiral tilted smectic materials. Here, we find the ferroelectric liquid crystals and antiferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs and AFLCs) which can provide 100-1,000 times faster pixel switching than nematic LCs. The hysteretic switching of bistable surface-stabilized FLCs and AFLCs allows for passive matrix addressing, which made these materials the prime candidates for large direct view LCDs in the 1990s, before the active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) technology was mature enough to allow for large display panels. While FLCs have found a number of applications, no AFLC device has as yet been commercialized. With today’s large TFT arrays - developed for nematic LCDs - there is an increasing interest in combining FLCs and AFLCs with active-matrix technology, e.g., with the fast FLCs used in monostable, analog switching modes. This could lead to even more powerful LCDs with full grayscale and superior speed (facilitating field sequential color generation) compared to nematic LCDs.