Reflective microdisplay using anti-ferroelectric liquid crystals

We have characterized the MLC00089 antiferroelectric liquid crystal (AFLC) mixture in terms of tilt angle, reflectance, and response time as a function of applied voltage. The derived highest contrast ratio was about 700 to 1. We also applied the simulated thin-film-transistor (TFT)-type circuit to direct drive a hardwired Si-based chip filled with the AFLC mixture by varying the values of storage capacitor and gate on-time. We found that adding a storage capacitor is effective to increase the signal if the gate on-time of the TFT is shorter than the AFLC response time. We also used quasi-DC driving with a short gate on-time on the hardwired chip as well as a Si-based reflective 1024 × 1280 (SXGA) microdisplay. We have accomplished the effective operation of the microdisplay using 5-frame quasi-DC driving with extrapolated polarity-frame inversion at 360 Hz suitable for field-sequential color displays using pulsed-light sources (light-emitting diodes) as well as optical storage applications. © 2000 Publication Board, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics.