title: Flexoelectric effect in an in-plane switching (IPS) liquid crystal cell for low-power consumption display devices.
abstract: Technology of displaying static images in portable displays, advertising panels and price tags pursues significant reduction in power consumption and in product cost. Driving at a low-frequency electric field in fringe-field switching (FFS) mode can be one of the efficient ways to save powers of the recent portable devices, but a serious drop of image-quality, so-called image-flickering, has been found in terms of the coupling of elastic deformation to not only quadratic dielectric effect but linear flexoelectric effect. Despite of the urgent requirement of solving the issue, understanding of such a phenomenon is yet vague. Here, we thoroughly analyze and firstly report the flexoelectric effect in in-plane switching (IPS) liquid crystal cell. The effect takes place on the area above electrodes due to splay and bend deformations of nematic liquid crystal along oblique electric fields, so that the obvious spatial shift of the optical transmittance is experimentally observed and is clearly demonstrated based on the relation between direction of flexoelectric polarization and electric field polarity. In addition, we report that the IPS mode has inherent characteristics to solve the image-flickering issue in the low-power consumption display in terms of the physical property of liquid crystal material and the electrode structure.
authors.affiliation: Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, United States.|Applied Materials Institute for BIN Convergence, Department of BIN Convergence Technology, and Department of Polymer Nano Science and Technology, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeonbuk 561-756, Korea.
authors.forename: Min Su
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, United States.
authors.forename: Philip J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Bos
authors.affiliation: Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, United States.
authors.forename: Dong-Woo
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242, United States.
authors.forename: Deng-Ke
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Applied Materials Institute for BIN Convergence, Department of BIN Convergence Technology, and Department of Polymer Nano Science and Technology, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeonbuk 561-756, Korea.
authors.forename: Joong Hee
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Applied Materials Institute for BIN Convergence, Department of BIN Convergence Technology, and Department of Polymer Nano Science and Technology, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, Jeonbuk 561-756, Korea.
authors.forename: Seung Hee
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Lee