Fast In-Plane Switching of a Liquid Crystal Cell Triggered by a Vertical Electric Field

We propose a fast two-step switching method of a homogeneous-aligned liquid crystal (LC) cell, where a trigger pulse is applied to align LCs vertically for a moment before they are in-plane switched to show a bright state. Because LCs aligned vertically by a trigger pulse are in a transient state rather than the stable state, the turn-on becomes faster. The turn-off also becomes faster because the pulse forcibly aligns the LC vertically to show the dark state. Experimental results show that significant acceleration of the grey-to-grey response a smell as on-off switching can be achieved by the proposed switching method. (C) 2009 The Japan Society of Applied Physics