Row‐backlight, column‐shutter display concept

Feasibility of a novel flat‐panel liquid‐crystal display that is capable of full‐motion video but does not require active elements at each pixel is shown. It can use the wide viewing angle, high contrast, and high speed of ferroelectric liquid crystals while being insensitive to their lack of a definite field threshold. To demonstrate this display, a linear array of ferroelectric liquid‐crystal shutters is driven to permit or block the view of rows that are illuminated one after another on an oscilloscope. At 15 V drive the shutters respond in 100 μs, which would be within the time available per row if the top and bottom halves of a display were to be addressed separately.