Bistable Light Shutter Using Dye-doped Liquid Crystals for a See-through Display

摘要

See-through displays have got high attention as one of the next generation display devices. Especially, see-through displays that use organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have been actively studied. However, a see-through display using OLEDs cannot provide black color because of their see-through area. Although a see-through display using LCDs can provide black color with crossed polarizers, it cannot block the background. This inevitable problem can be solved by placing a light shutter at the back of a see-through display. To maintain the transparent or opaque state, an electric field must be applied to a light shutter. To achieve low power consumption, a bistable light shutter using polymer-stabilized cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC) has been proposed. It is switchable between the translucent and transparent states only. Therefore, it cannot provide black color. Moreover, it cannot block the background perfectly because of poor performance in the translucent state. In this work we will introduce a bistable light shutter using dye-doped CLCs. To improve the electro-optic characteristics in the opaque state, we employed a crossed electrode structure instead of a parallel one. We will demonstrate that the light shutter can exhibit stable bistable operation between the transparent homeotropic and opaque focal-conic states thanks to polymer stabilization.