Hybrid aligned rod-like liquid crystalline polymer film as viewing angle compensator for NW-TN-LCDs: Improvement of gray scale performance

A viewing angle compensator composed of a hybrid aligned rod-like liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) has been developed and commercialized. The viewing angle compensator has two controllable parameters. One is the average tilt angle, and the other is the thickness of the LCP layer. These two parameters and the driving cell parameter affect the viewing angle performance such as the Iso-contrast ratio (Iso-CR) and gray scale inversion. The optimum parameters were estimated by computer simulation techniques, and measurements of the viewing angle performance of the optimized panel were carried out. The results of the measurements coincided with the simulated results. The optimized panel shows great improvements in gray scale performance as well as Iso-CR.