Ionic effects on electro-optics and residual direct current voltages of twisted nematic liquid crystal cells

Abstract

By using electro-optical and dielectric absorption [1-4] measurements, we report our investigations of ionic effects on electro-optics and residual direct current voltages (VrDCs) of two polyimide (PI)-aligned twisted nematic (TN) cells with same liquid crystal mixture but different PI-alignment materials. We have also carried out new experimental methods to find out that the observed VrDCs were caused by LC-PI-interfacial trapped ions generated and transported from the LC medium for one TN cell, and from the PI layers for the other TN cell. Our measured VrDCs indicated that the former had two different exponential-decay rates similar to the published results by M. Mizusaki et al. [2] but the latter had only a single exponential-decay rate. [GRAPHICS] .