Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic version.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Kent State University, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. (Aug. 16, 2006). Advisor: Liang-Chy Chien. Includes bibliographical references (p. 133- 137).

From cell phones, laptops, desktops, TVs, to projectors, high reliability LCDs have become indispensable in our daily life. Tremendous progress in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) has been made after decades of extensive research and development in materials, device configurations and manufacturing technology. Nowadays, the most critical issue on viewing angle has been solved using multidomain structures and optical film compensation. Slow response time has been improved to 2-5 ms with low viscosity LC material, overdrive and undershoot voltage, and thin cell gap approach. Moving image blur has been significantly reduced by impulse driving and frame insertion. Contrast ratio in excess of one million-to-1 has been achieved through local dimming of the segmented LED backlight. The color gamut would exceed 100% of the NTSC (National Television System Committee), if RGB LEDs are used. Besides these technological advances, the cost has been reduced dramatically by investing in advanced manufacturing technologies. Polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal displays (BPLCDs) based on Kerr effect is emerging as a potential next-generation display technology. In comparison to conventional nematic devices, the polymer-stabilized BPLCDs exhibit following attractive features: (1) submillisecond response time, (2) no need for molecular alignment layers, (3) optically isotropic dark state when sandwiched between crossed polarizers, and (4) transmittance is insensitive to cell gap when the in-plane electrodes are employed. However, aside from these great potentials, there are still some tough technical issues remain to be addressed. The major challenges are: 1) the operating voltage is still too high (~50 Volts vs. 5 Volts for conventional nematic LCDs), and the transmittance is relatively low (~65% iv vs. 85% for nematic LCDs), 2) the hysteresis effect and residual birefringence effect are still noticeable, 3) the mesogenic temperature range is still not wide enough for practical applications (40 oC to 80 oC), and 4) the ionic impurities in these polymer-stabilized nano-structured LC composites could degrade the voltage holding ratio, which causes image sticking. In this dissertation, the BPLC materials are studied and the new BPLC device structures are designed to optimize display performances. From material aspect, the electro-optical properties of blue phase liquid crystals are studied based on Kerr effect. Temperature effects on polymer-stabilized blue phase or optically isotropic liquid crystal displays are investigated through the measurement of voltage dependent transmittance under different temperatures. The physical models for the temperature dependency of Kerr constant, induced birefringence and response time in BPLCs are first proposed and experimentally validated. In addition, we have demonstrated a polymer-stabilized BPLC mixture with a large Kerr constant K~13.7 nm/V2 at 20 oC and =633 nm. These models would set useful guidelines for optimizing material performances. From devices side, the basic operation principle of blue phase LCD is introduced. A numerical model is developed to simulate the electro-optic properties of blue phase LCDs based on in-plane-switching (IPS) structure. Detailed electrode dimension effect, distribution of induced birefringence, cell gap effect, correlation between operation voltage and Kerr constant, and wavelength dispersion are investigated. Viewing angle is another important parameter. We have optimized the device configurations according to the device physics studied. With proper new device designs, the operating voltage is decreased dramatically from around 50 Volts to below 10 Volts with a reasonably high transmittance (~70%) which enables the BPLCDs to be addressed by amorphous silicon thin-film transistors (TFTs). Moreover, weak wavelength v dispersion, samll color shift, and low hysteresis BPLCDs are achieved after their root causes being unveiled. Optimization of device configurations plays a critical role to the widespread applications of BPLCDs. In addition to displays, blue phase liquid crystals can also be used for photonic applications, such as light modulator, phase grating, adaptive lens and photonic crystals. We will introduce the application of blue phase liquid crystal as a modulator to realize a viewing angle controllable display. The viewing angle can be tuned continuously and precisely with a fast response time. The detailed design and performance are also presented in this dissertation.

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Interaction with mobile devices suffers from a number of shortcomings, most of which are linked to the small size of screens. Artificial tactile feedback promises to be particularly well suited to the mobile interaction context. To be practical, tactile transducers for mobile devices must be small and light, and yet be capable of displaying a rich set of expressive stimuli. This thesis introduces a tactile transducer for mobile interaction that is capable of distributed skin stimulation on the fingertip. The transducer works on a principle that was first investigated because of its potential application to the display of Braille. A preliminary study was conducted on an earlier version of the transducer. It concluded that subjects were able to identify simple Braille characters with a high rate of success. Then, a complete re-design of the transducer addressed the goal of integration in a handheld prototype for mobile interaction. The resulting device comprises a liquid crystal graphic display co-located with the miniature, low-power, distributed tactile transducer. Next, it was needed to measure the perceptual differences between the stimuli that the device could display. Our experiences with one evaluation approach raised questions relating to the methodology for data collection. Therefore, an analysis of the process was carried out using a stimulus set obtained with the device. By means of multidimensional scaling analysis, both the perceptual parameters forming the stimuli space and the evaluation technique were validated. Finally, two experiments were carried out with the objective to develop new mobile interactions paradigms that combined visual and tactile feedback. Both experiments modeled a list scrolling task on the device. The first experiment found a marginal improvement in performance when tactile feedback was employed. It also came at a higher attentional cost dedicated to operating the device. For the second experiment, the scrolling paradigm and the tactile feedback were improved. This lead to a decrease in the reliance on vision when tactile feedback was enabled. Results showed a 28% decrease in the number of key presses that controlled the visibility state of the scroll list.

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Il est actuellement bien connu que les molécules non sphériques peuvent former des mésophases (ou cristaux liquides), c'est-à-dire des phases dont les propriétés sont intermédiaires entre celles des liquides et celles des cristaux. La mésophase la plus connue est la phase nématique. Il s'agit d'une phase caractérisée par une distribution aléatoire des centres de masse des molécules, mais dans laquelle l'orientation des molécules présente une direction préférentielle, désignée par un vecteur unité appelé le directeur du nématique. Une telle phase possède donc la fluidité d'un liquide tout en présentant, tel un cristal, une biréfringence. C'est cette dernière propriété qui est exploitée dans les applications technologiques, principalement dans les dispositifs d'affichage.<p>Dans un tel dispositif, le liquide nématique est contenu dans une cellule (il y a une cellule par pixel), et son directeur est manipulé à l'aide d'un champ extérieur, électrique ou magnétique. Pour une bonne compréhension du fonctionnement de ce dispositif, il est essentiel de connaître le profil du directeur à travers la cellule en l'absence de champ extérieur. Dans le cadre de ce travail, nous avons étudié un nématique torsadé, c'est-à-dire dont le directeur décrit une hélice à travers la cellule. <p>Ce profil est déterminé principalement par les propriétés d'ancrage du liquide nématique sur les parois solides de la cellule. En effet, celles-ci peuvent posséder une direction d'ancrage privilégiée, qui favorise l'alignement du directeur dans une direction particulière. Nous avons considéré ici le cas de directions d'ancrage planaires, c'est-à-dire que le directeur est dans le plan des parois. Alors que l'ajout de parois identiques dans le système induit toujours une non-uniformité spatiale dans la densité du nématique (en comparaison avec un nématique en coeur de phase), l'utilisation de directions d'ancrage différentes induit une non-uniformité orientationnelle dans le directeur du nématique; dans notre cas une torsion. C'est principalement ce profil de directeur torsadé qui nous intéresse ici. <p>L'objectif général de ce travail consiste donc à étudier les propriétés d'ancrage d'une phase nématique confinée et torsadée, d'une part par une théorie microscopique (théorie de la fonctionnelle de la densité), et d'autre part sur le plan de simulations de Monte Carlo, en particulier dans le cas où les molécules ont la forme de disques (discotiques).<p> / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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