This work investigates the switching characteristics of the polymer-stabilized vertical alignment (VA) liquid crystal (LC) cell. The experimental results reveal that the fall time of the cell declines as the monomer concentration increases because the vertically-aligned polymer networks accelerate the relaxation of the LC molecules. Furthermore, the formed polymer networks impede the growth and annihilation of LC defects, suppressing the optical bounce in the time dependent transmittance curve of the cell when the voltage is applied to the cell, substantially reducing the rise time of the cell. A step-voltage driving scheme is demonstrated to eliminate completely the optical bounce and hence improve further the rise time of the VA LC cell. The rise times of the pristine and the polymer-stabilized VA LC cells under the step-voltage driving scheme are less than 50% of those under the conventional driving scheme.

We investigate the electrooptical properties of polymer-stabilized vertically aligned (PSVA) pi cells. Curing a cell with a curing voltage causes the polymerized cell to have a low threshold voltage and a fast field-on response time, because the curing voltage gives the polymerized cell in-cell polymer structures, inhibiting the flow of the liquid crystal (LC) domains and also providing the LCs a sustained pretilt angle. Additionally, under high-voltage operation, the field-on and field-off response times of the PSVA pi cell operated under the step voltage driving scheme are found to be less than those of the cell operated under the conventional bias voltage driving scheme, because the electric torques exerted on the LCs in the step voltage driving scheme are higher than those exerted on the LCs in the bias voltage driving scheme.