Optically switching ferroelectric liquid crystal light valve

Abstract

Abstract A liquid crystal light valve cell has two optically different states switchable therebetween by bias voltage in response to incident light. A ferroelectric liquid crystal layer (14) is sandwiched by a pair of front and rear alignment layers (13a, b) to establish the two bistable states in the ferroelectric liquid crystal layer. A front electrode layer (12b) is disposed on the front alignment layer (13b). An optically reflecting layer (17) is disposed on the rear alignment layer (13a). A photo-conductive layer (15) is disposed on the reflecting layer (17) and responsive to the incident light incident from the rear face of cell to increase its electroconductivity. A rear electrode layer (12a) is disposed on the photo-conductive layer (15) in cooperation with the front electrode layer (12b) to apply the bias voltage between the multi-layer structure including the liquid crystal layer (14) and the photo-conductive layer (15) such that effective bias voltage is applied across the liquid crystal layer through the increased electroconductive region of photo-conductive layer to thereby effect the switching between the two bistable states. The multi-layer structure is sandwiched by a pair of front and rear transparent substrates (11a, b) to construct the liquid crystal light valve cell.

Inventors

• 👤 Shuhei C/O Seiko Instrum. Inc. Yamamoto
• 👤 Naoki C/O Seiko Instrum. Inc. Kato

Bibliographic Details