In the patterned vertical alignment ͑PVA͒ cell in which multidomains are formed from the perfect vertical alignment through an oblique field only, the formation of disclinations between liquid crystal ͑LC͒ molecules is inevitable in the presence of an electric field, which lowers transmittance and the response time. In the proposed PVA device, the pretilt angle is formed in four different directions through the polymerization of an UV curable reactive mesogen monomer at the surface. In this way, the reorientation of LC responding to an electric field is well defined, and thus the device shows reduced threshold voltage and much improved response time in all gray scales.

Conventional multi-domain vertically aligned liquid crystal (LC) cells have defect points due to the collision of LC directors during the formation of multiple domains. In addition, the location of defects changes with time resulting in a slow response time. This paper proposes a robust vertically aligned LC cell, where the LCs are locked by polymer walls, and the azimuthal anchoring on the surface of the alignment layer is controlled by the polymerization of a UV curable reactive mesogen monomer. As a result, the defect points are trapped at a single position, resulting in a greatly improved response time.

We have fabricated carbon nanotubes (CNTs) doped homogeneously aligned nematic liquid crystal cells driven by fringe-field switching and their electro-optic characteristics were investigated. The CNTs doped liquid crystal cell shows lower transmittance, higher driving voltage but faster response time than those in the pure liquid crystal cell. In addition, CNTs-doped liquid crystal cells as a function of the CNT length were investigated. This paper gives an explanation on difference in electro-optic characteristics of pure and CNT-doped LC in the FFS mode.

We proposed vertical alignment liquid crystal devices (VA-LCDs) in which the vertically aligned LC is surrounded by polymer wall, named locked-super homeotropic (LSH) device. Although the device has advantages of wideviewing angle, spacer-free and simple fabrication, it exhibited relatively slow rising response time due to undefined azimuthal tilting direction with bias voltage. To resolve the problem, we fixed pretilt angle of VA using the polymerization of reactive mesogen (RM) with bias voltage. Conclusively, dynamic stability of LC directors is improved, exhibiting a fast response time.