Discovery of dc switching of a bistable boundary layer liquid crystal display

Abstract

A liquid crystal display based on bistable boundary layer configurations has been shown previously [Cheng et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 40, 1007 (1982)] to have memory, adequate contrast, low-voltage operation, and a bistability that is relatively insensitive to changes in material properties, cell parameters, and temperature. We report here the discovery that a short, low voltage dc pulse switches the display into one or the other of its bistable states, depending on the polarity of the pulse. Experiments suggest that a storage display of this type having n lines of pels can be rewritten in (50+20n) milliseconds using voltages of less than 2 V. Consequently, a large area, low power, nonrefreshed display is possible.