Silicon Liquid Crystal Light Valve for Flight Simulation Applications

摘要

The basic objective of this program has been to develop a silicon photoconductor liquid crystal light valve (Si LCLV) for application in wide-field-of-view simulators. The Si LCLV is expected to offer several advantages over the cadmium sulfide (CdS) photoconductor LCLV, including higher sensitivity, a significantly better switching ratio, higher resolution, and (most importantly) a fast response time to allow higher 60-Hz operation. The main thrust of this program was to upgrade the device in the following areas: (1) Scale up to a 2-inch aperture device (from a 1 cm x 1 cm active area). (2) Implement the silicon/silicon dioxide (Si/SiO2) dielectric mirror and improve the light blocking layer. (3) Upgrade device resolution by optimizing the focusing grid. (4) Increase the contrast ratio by improving silicon processing. (5) Implement the dc-biased guard ring to prevent edge breakdown. (6) Optimize liquid crystal operation to reduce the reponse time. Significant improvements were achieved in all areas.