Electro-optic performance of a liquid-crystal (LC) system is enhanced by TiO(2) nanoparticle dispersed in nematic liquid crystal (NLC). The 2.5 V threshold voltage of LC for device operation is lowered to 0.5 V through TiO(2) nanoparticle mixing up to 2 wt.%. To characterize the shape and size distribution of the nanoparticles, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy is employed. Transmittance spectra for the TiO(2) dispersed LC structure and nondispersed LC structure showed that transparency of the TiO(2) dispersed LC is similar to that of pure liquid LC.

We recently achieved the homogeneous alignment of liquid crystal (LC) on amorphous Ta2O5 layers. This study demonstrates that LC layers could be aligned either homogeneously or vertically by increasing the growth temperature of rf magnetron sputtering device and the irradiation time of the DuoPIGatron type Ar ion beam device causing uniform and dense plasma. We attained two LC orientations by observing Ta 4f and O 1s peak shifts with x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Moreover, the decreased thickness of layers with high-k dielectric constants helped to decrease driving LC voltages and in turn to achieve low power consumption.

High-performance liquid crystals (LCs) driven at a 0.9 V threshold were demonstrated on very thin HfO2 films with vertical (homeotropic) alignment by ion bombardment. Atomic layer deposition was used to obtain LC orientation on ultrathin high-quality films of double-layer HfO2/Al2O3. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicated that full oxidization of HfO2 film surfaces was induced by ion bombardment, shifting the Hf 4f spectra to lower binding energies. The increased intensities of the Hf 4f peaks after ion bombardment confirmed that nonstoichiometric HfOx was converted to the fully oxidized HfO2 surfaces.

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This paper introduces the vertically aligned twisted nematic in-plane switching (VPS) structure, and compares the electro-optical (EO) characteristics of VPS liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and in-plane switching (IPS) LCDs. Various VPS-LCD pretilt angles were induced, and ion beam (IB) irradiation was used to enhance the EO properties. An x-ray photoelectron spectroscopic analysis of the IB-irradiated polymer surface confirmed that the intensity of C=O bonding as a function of exposure time traced the pretilt angles. The pretilt angle effect on optical properties was first analyzed in the experimental results. While multidomain vertical alignment LCDs and IPS-LCDs only resolve one difficulty, the VPS-LCDs described here overcome several viewing angle and transmittance curve problems.