Flexible bistable chiral nematic liquid crystal display with enhanced memory characteristic by surface treatment

Abstract

We proposed a flexible bistable chiral splay nematic liquid crystal display with the enhanced memory characteristics by the surface treatment with reactive mesogen (RM). With the polymerized RM structure on alignment layers adopted, the energy barrier between splay and pi-twisted states in the bistable chiral splay nematic liquid crystal mode is increased because of the enhancement of the azimuthal anchoring energy, and thus, the spontaneous relaxation from the pi-twisted state to the initial splay state is remarkably impeded. As a result, the memory retention time became twice as long as that of the conventional cell without the polymerized RM structure, and the stable memory characteristics were maintained against the external deformation.