Liquid crystals used in electronic displays usually contain small amounts of ions that move under the influence of the varying applied electric field. It is well known that the motion of ions perpendicular to the substrates may lead to modified electric fields resulting in image sticking effects. During operation, the modulation in the director tilt angle can also lead to a net residual lateral component of the ion motion, parallel with the glass plates. A sustained ac driving voltage will accumulate the lateral ion motion and may result in image sticking effects near the pixel edge. Such effects have indeed been observed in supertwisted nematic cells.

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The presence of ions in a liquid crystal (LC) influences the transmission characteristics of LC displays. These ions follow the electric field perpendicular to the electrodes and move back and forth under the influence of the ac field. Because of their charge, they can distort the electric field, which leads to transmission changes. Recently it was discovered that due to the LC anisotropy, ion motion parallel with the plane of the electrodes (perpendicular to the electric field) is also possible, even without lateral fields. After driving a pixel for a long time, the ions will accumulate at one pixel edge, which leads to unwanted image artifacts. In this paper, we investigate the frequency dependence of the lateral ion transport in twisted nematic liquid crystal displays at high and low ion concentrations, different ion mobilities, and LC rotational viscosities, for a fixed voltage just above the LC threshold.