The outlook for blue-phase LCDs

Polymer-stabilized blue-phase liquid crystal (BPLC) has become an increasingly important technology trend for information display and photonic applications. BPLC exhibits several attractive features, such as reasonably wide temperature range, submillisecond gray-to-gray response time, no need for alignment layer, optically isotropic voltageoff state, and large cell gap tolerance when an in-plane switching (IPS) cell is employed. Fast response time not only suppresses image blurs, improves the overall transmittance but also enables color sequential display without noticeable color breakup. With time sequential RGB LED colors, the spatial color filters can be eliminated so that both optical efficiency and resolution density are tripled. High optical efficiency helps to reduce power consumption while high resolution density is particularly desirable for the future Ultra High Definition Television. However, some bottlenecks such as high operation voltage, hysteresis, low relaxation frequency, residual birefringence, image sticking, charging issue due to the large capacitance, and relatively low transmittance for the IPS mode, remain to be overcome before widespread application of BPLC can be realized. To reduce operation voltage, both new BPLC materials and new device structures have been investigated. In this paper, we highlight some recent advances in large Kerr constant, fast response time BPLC material development, and new device structures. Especially, we will focus on new BP LCDs with low operation voltage, submillisecond response time, high transmittance, and negligible hysteresis and residual birefringence. The sunrise for BP LCD is near.