Liquid Crystal Display—Present Status and Emerging Technology

Abstract

Nowadays, in your daily lives, the applications of LCs, such as LCD TVs, computer/laptop monitors, mobile phones, navigators, digital cameras, and so on, are widely used worldwide. Even, wherever you are whatever you do, you can take your electronics out of your pocket to check your e-mails, listen to music, watch movies, find your way, and so many others. LCDs provide high performance in regard to the weight, volume, contrast ratio, viewing angle, low power consumption, etc. That's why the high-quality applications of LCDs are indispensable and paid much attention by scientists and electronics industries in the recent decade. Undoubtedly, LCDs have acted as a leader in the field of flat panel displays, in not only small-sized displays, but also large-sized ones. Refer to cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors; LCDs have almost completely replaced CRT monitors in the display market because of their bulky and high power consumption, despite their good response time, viewing angle, image quality. However, in addition to the present status of LCD applications, some emerging technologies, such as wide viewing angle displays, fast response displays, blue phase LCDs, flexible displays, 3D displays, high resolution displays, in-cell touch panel, electronic papers, tablets, etc., have also attracted much attention. In this chapter, the introductions of the present status of LCD industry, as well as the emerging technology for improving the performances of LCDs will be given. Liquid Crystal Display ModesRegarding the commercial products of LCDs [1-3], their operating principles for modulating light intensity and/or light polarization include polarization

Optically enriched and guided dynamics of active skyrmions

“…However, differently from conventional photo-responsive material systems, the means of guiding out of equilibrium phenomena in active matter remain limited, even though a few elegant demonstrations of such optical guiding of active matter already exist [10][11][12][13][14]. Optical guiding of active behavior in LCs could be of particular interest as it could allow for the ensuing control of light by these anisotropic materials, as is done in displays and spatial light modulators [15,16], while also invoking emergent many-body effects, such as schooling of skyrmions [9]. However, so far only equilibrium free energy landscapes for controlling behavior of these topological solitons have been tuned with light [17].…”

“…One can drive skyrmion motion by electric currents in magnetic materials [26,27]. Skyrmion motion can also be realized in chiral LCs by means of rotational dynamics of the LC director field n(r) prompted by modulation of electric fields, in which the electric power is applied via electrodes on confining substrates, similar to those used in display technologies [9,15,16,36,37]. However, this electricallyinduced active motion has only limited types of collective emergent behavior.…”

“…We demonstrate reconfigurations of the dynamic skyrmion crowds into single-file lines, steer and inhibit skyrmion motion by changing polarization of patterned light illumination, optically induce skyrmion jamming and unjamming transitions, and other means of controlling complex motion with emergent active behavior. Since the system is based on materials and preparation techniques that are commonly used in the LC display industry [15,16], this work may lead to re-defining human-computer communications through LCbased touch-screen displays and expand the scope of augmented or virtual reality devices.…”

Topological transformations of Hopf solitons in chiral ferromagnets and liquid crystals

“…three-dimensional soliton | self-assembly | ferromagnetism | chirality I n every pixel of a liquid crystal (LC) display, the ordering direction of LC's rod-like molecules, called "director" n, is rotated by a weak electric field, so that the transmitted light can be controlled to convey information at will (1)(2)(3). This facile electric switching, which is at the heart of the $500 billion per year LC industry (3), deals with very simple uniform and continuously distorted structures of the director field n(r).…”

“…Starting from Gauss, Kelvin, and Maxwell (9), knots in fields fascinated physicists and mathematicians alike. By introducing the celebrated Hopf fibration (10), Hopf demonstrated that, indeed, interlinked closed loops could be smoothly embedded in the 3D space (R 3 ). Localized in all three spatial dimensions, 3D topological Hopf solitons are physical realizations of topology of such fibrations, with each closed-loop region of space corresponding to a single distinct orientation of the field (9,(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19).…”