Fast bistable nematic display using monostable surface switching

I. Dozov, M. Nobili, and G. Durand

Citation: Appl. Phys. Lett. 70, 1179 (1997); doi: 10.1063/1.118479
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.118479
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Fast bistable nematic display using monostable surface switching

I. Dozov,a) M. Nobili, and G. Durand
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Universite Paris-Sud, Associated with French CNRS (LA 2),
91405 Orsay Cedex, France

~Received 4 September 1996; accepted for publication 31 December 1996!

We present a novel surface-controlled bistable nematic liquid crystal display. This black and white
device uses simple monostable planar anchorings and a dielectrically positive nematic. The two
bistable textures are, respectively, quasiuniform U and almost half-turn twisted T. Short electric
pulses break the surface anchorings. Hydrodynamically coupled breaking of both anchorings creates
T. U is obtained by breaking only one anchoring. Write and erase times for high resolution video
are achieved at voltages compatible with the usual drivers. 1997 American Institute of Physics.
@S0003-6951~97!04209-5#
Pixel bistability is an important property for passive matrix liquid crystal displays: it allows infinite time memory
and screen resolution. Up to now, only ferroelectric smectic
C * can achieve this goal.1 They present, however, some
drawbacks, related to the smectic layering: structure defects
from mechanical stresses are difficult to heal. Nematic liquids would in principle be more appropriate candidates. Indeed, many authors have proposed volume switching mechanisms between bistable volume textures, to create bistable
nematic displays.24 In practice, as recently demonstrated5
volume switching is relatively slow ~ms range! and inefficient for video display. A few years ago, surface switched
bistable nematic displays were presented.68 Their proposed
mechanism was the breaking of surface anchoring, giving
fast write time in the ms range. Bistable anchoring plates
were used, defining two planar textures of different azimuths. In practice, despite more recent efforts9 such bistable
anchorings are difficult to produce. In this letter, we report
on a novel kind of surface controlled bistable nematic display, using simple planar monostable anchorings, which
overcomes this difficulty.
Let us consider the uniform planar nematic texture U of
Fig. 1~a!, defined as usual by two parallel planar oriented
plates. With the same anchoring, the nematic could also
adopt the 180 twisted texture T of Fig. 1~b!, optically very
different from Fig. 1~a!. Although T has a higher elastic
energy than U, in the absence of defects one cannot proceed
continuously from T toward U. If necessary, by suitable cholesteric doping, one can give to U and T exactly the same
energy so that defects would not induce any switching. The
two textures U and T can be considered as bistable.
To switch from U to T or T to U one could use a nematic with positive dielectric anisotropy e a , and an electric
field E normal to the plates. We call W S 5(1/2)
3(K/l)cos2 u S the surface anchoring energy, where K
;1026 dyne is the curvature elastic constant, l;500 the
surface extrapolation length and u S the orientation of the
surface molecules ~Fig. 2!. As usual we call j E the dielectric
coherence length, defined by e a E 2 /~4p!5K/ j 2E . The surface
anchoring is broken when j E 5l, defining a critical field E c
in the range of 510 V/mm ~for nematics with high positive
dielectric anisotropy e a >510 and moderately strong ana!

Electronic mail: dozov@physol.lps.u-psud.fr

Appl. Phys. Lett. 70 (9), 3 March 1997

choring l>500!. Above E c ~assumed here to be the same for

the two plates 1 and 2! u S 50 and the cell is completely
aligned perpendicular to the plates ~Fig. 2!. We now slowly
decrease the field E below E c . The surface molecules tilt
back toward their planar lower energy state. Because of the
curvature elastic coupling, the surface molecules on plates 1
and 2 rotate in the same sense, remaining parallel @Fig. 3~a!#.
For E50, one obtains the uniform U texture again. Now
suppose that instead of the slow decrease, we turn off the
field E sharply. A hydrodynamical coupling now exists between the molecules on plates 1 and 2. If strong enough, this
coupling would force the molecules to rotate in opposite directions @Fig. 3~b!#. This finally results in a 180 bend-splay
rotation of the molecules between the plates 1 and 2. Due to
the elastic anisotropy, this texture is unstable and rapidly
converts into a 180 twist. The final state is now T. After
application of a square pulse of amplitude E.E c and duration t, one should always find a twisted final state T, whatever may be the initial state ~U or T!, erased through anchoring breaking. To produce a final state U one can simply use
a cell with different surface critical fields E c1 .E c2 . For E
.E c1 , one should again obtain the T state. For E c1 .E
.E c2 , one should find the U state, since the single broken
( u S2 50) anchoring on plate 2 cannot maintain the twist.
For this hydrodynamical coupling to be efficient a synchronization condition is necessary. The surface relaxation
time t S is defined10 by 1/t S >K/(l 2 h ) where the viscosity
h;0.1 poise. For l'500 , t S is of the order of few microseconds. During t S , the surface molecule rotation creates a
surface velocity V>l/ t S . The molecules of the nematic cell
of thickness d are also dragged, because of friction and inertia, after the vortex diffusion time t D >d 2 r / h , where r is
the specific mass of the nematic. The two plates are hydro-

FIG. 1. Bistable textures: ~a! undistorted U; ~b! 180 twisted T.

0003-6951/97/70(9)/1179/3/$10.00

1997 American Institute of Physics

1179

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FIG. 2. Homeotropic texture of the sample under strong electric field E. The
surface anchorings are broken ( u s1 5 u s2 50).

dynamically coupled for t D < t S , i.e., d,l h / AK r >102 l.

The coupling exists only for thin samples ~d smaller than a
few mm!.
To check these ideas we have prepared a thin nematic
cell ~d51.5 mm! with two monostable planar anchorings on
indiumtinoxide ~ITO! electrodes. The ITO square resistance is 30 V. The planar anchorings are obtained using a
grazing SiO evaporation with 75 incidence. The SiO thicknesses are 25 and 30 , to produce slightly different anchoring strengths. An asymmetric sample is thus obtained. The
threshold depends on the polarity of the applied electric field
because of the flexoelectric effect.10 For one polarity the two
critical fields for anchoring breaking get closer, for the other
one they get further apart. The nematic material is
4-cyano-48-n-pentylbiphenyl ~5CB! at room temperature,
presenting a large e a '10. To ensure the final twist direction,
we rotate the two plates by 45. The sample is observed
under a polarizing microscope. The lowest energy U state is
now twisted by 45. The T state, obtained at random after
filling the cell, is twisted by 180455135. It decays towards U by slow motion of defects ~a few decades of seconds for our 438 mm2 pixel!.
We apply short square pulses of voltage V up to 630 V
for a duration t in the range of 10 10 4 ms. We start by
choosing t5600 ms and positive polarity for V. Up to 20 V
the U texture is conserved @Fig. 4~a!#. One sees only a transient blinking in the sample, due to the bulk alignment.
Above 20 V, one observes a definite change of texture over
the whole pixel area submitted to the field @Fig. 4~b!#. Optically this texture presents the same rotatory power as the
135 twisted T texture already observed. V w 520 V is the
threshold to induce the UT transition. Now starting from
T, below 20 V we do not find any uniform erasing. Close to
20 V one creates many defects, which induce a nonuniform

FIG. 3. Texture relaxation when switching off the field E. ~a! Slow decrease
of E. The molecules on both plates are coupled elastically and rotate in the
same direction. The final texture is U. ~b! Sharp decrease of E. The coupled
hydrodynamic velocities V in appropriately thin cell forces opposite directions of molecular rotations on plates 1 and 2. The resulting 180 bend
texture relaxes in few milliseconds to the 180 twist texture T.
1180

Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 70, No. 9, 3 March 1997

FIG. 4. 438 mm2 pixel: ~a! U state; ~b! T state.

TU transition. Above 20 V the T texture is obtained once

more. This T texture is quasipermanent. It decays within a
few decades of seconds due to the slow motion of defects.
The mobility of the defects depends on the difference of the
elastic energies of the T and U textures. If we increase the
initial cell twist up to 70 or if we dope the nematic with a
few percent of cholesteric ~in order to obtain spontaneous
twist of the nematic intermediate between the twist angles
imposed by the plates in the T and U states! we increase the
decay time up to a few minutes. At larger initial twist or
smaller cholesteric pitch we observe spontaneous transformation of the mobile bulk defects into fixed surface walls
and the T texture remains stable for several weeks.
We now choose the opposite ~negative! polarity. Starting
from U, we again find a threshold V W 5222.5 V above
which one induces the T texture. Starting from T, one finds a
new and lower threshold V e 5220 V. Below V e the texture
T is conserved. For u V w u . u V u . u V e u one erases, i.e., one
induces a TU transition. For u V u . u V w u , one obtains the
T texture once more.
This behavior is easy to understand: for one polarity, the
critical fields of the two surfaces tend to be close to each
other and we can hardly break only one of the surface anchorings. For the other polarity, the two critical fields are
different, which allows us to break either the two surface
anchorings ~to write!, or only one ~to erase!. To summarize,
the final texture depends only on the amplitude ~or polarity!
of the applied pulse, whatever the initial state may be.
We now vary t. For t.100 ms, the same bistable behavior is observed, with slightly increasing thresholds for shorter
t. For t,100 ms, we observe a new counter behavior: we
still find a surface breaking threshold, but the texture alternates from U to T, or T to U, keeping the memory of the
initial state. We have found that when doping 5 CB with
23
mole! we
organic ions ~for instance Na1B~C6H5!2
4 at 10
decrease the thresholds and stabilize the bistable behavior
down to t510 ms. In Fig. 5 we present the obtained thresholds for two opposite polarities with such a doped nematic.
For t530 ms, compatible with a high definition video line
access time, the thresholds are u V w u 524 V and u V e u 520 V,
compatible with the usual drivers. These thresholds vary by
less than 1 V over the surface of our cell ~one row of three
438 mm2 pixels!. For our optically nonoptimized cell we
measure a contrast of 20 between the U and T states ~Fig. 4!.
The optimization should bear on the nematic birefringence,
the cell thickness, the twist angle of the cell, the cholesteric
doping, and the polarizer orientation. We must also improve
the anchorings by finding low threshold planar alignment
Dozov, Nobili, and Durand

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coupled for thin samples, the twisted texture is written.

When only one single surface anchoring is broken, the
twisted texture is erased. The writing or erasing times are
compatible with high resolution video with standard drivers.
The optical response time is the typical one of a thin cell, in
the ms range ~'4 ms for our d51.5 mm cell!. The existence
of two sharp thresholds and texture bistability allows in principle, the multiplexability for matrix display.
The authors acknowledge helpful discussions with R.
Barberi and Ph. Martinot-Lagarde. This work was supported
by the EEC under the Brite Euram Contract and is part of a
cooperation program between the French CNRS and SFIMODS Company.
FIG. 5. Writing (V w ) and erasing (V e ) voltage thresholds as a function of
the pulse duration t.

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layers with a simple technology to be used on a real production line. This work is currently under way.
To conclude, we have realized a bistable nematic display
based on a new physical principle: the hydrodynamically
coupled breaking of anchorings for appropriately thin cells.
It uses simple planar anchorings, which can permanently
maintain two textures, one with low twist, the other with
higher twist. The transition between the two textures is produced by application of short electric pulses. When the
pulses break both surface anchorings, hydrodynamically

Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 70, No. 9, 3 March 1997

Dozov, Nobili, and Durand

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