Method and apparatus for reducing optical cross talk in a liquid crystal optical switch

摘要

A field sequential color display system (10) employs a liquid crystal device operating as a variable optical retarder (12) which is positioned in front of the screen (40) of a raster scanned cathode ray tube (38) to develop a high quality multicolored image. The liquid crystal device is divided into upper and lower cell segments (34 and 36) to decrease the time between successive color fields. Each cell segment has a separate electrode structure (30 and 32) and a common electrode structure (22) and is separately commanded by a switching circuit (46) to a predetermined optical retardation state when the electron beam scans the portion of the screen covered by the cell segment. The switching circuit provides signals in a predetermined time sequence to the cell segments to minimize the optical cross talk between them and thereby minimize the spurious transmission of colored light from the display system.