Fast switching of a nematic liquid crystal cell with neither alignment materials nor alignment process

We propose a method for fast switching of nematic liquid crystals with neither alignment materials nor alignment process. A three-terminal electrode structure is used to apply in-plane and vertical electric fields to randomly-aligned liquid crystals. A vertical field is applied to align liquid crystals vertically for the dark state, whereas an in-plane field is applied to align liquid crystals homogeneously for the bright state. We obtained the turn-on time of 1.2 ms and turn-off time of 0.5 ms in the three-terminal electrode structure with neither alignment materials nor alignment process. However, three-terminal electrode structure with neither alignment material nor alignment process shows low transmittance. For higher transmittance, we mixed reactive mesogen and nano-particles with anisotropic molecular shape to liquid crystals. As a result, we obtained a transmittance similar to the conventional fringe field switching mode and achieved the total response time of less than 3 ms.