![]() ![]() That direction, characterized by a parameter called the director, affects whether polarized light passes through the material or not and thus whether an LCD pixel is bright or dark.Ĭontrolling the director is possible with electric fields. The molecules are free to move around as if in a traditional liquid, but their rod axes all point in the same general direction, rather like a crowd of people milling around, all with their heads oriented upward. If the same speedup can be achieved in materials that work at lower, more practical temperatures, new types of rapidly responsive electro-optic devices could result, such as virtual reality displays.Ĭonventional liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) use so-called nematic materials, in which the molecules typically have rod-like shapes. A newly developed liquid crystal can switch states more rapidly than those in current use. ![]() Liquid crystals, used in visual displays for more than 50 years, can be electrically switched between two molecular arrangements: one transparent and the other opaque. Here, the transmission change shows up as a red-to-green transition, but the setup can be modified to produce a light-to-dark transition. ![]() Right: When the molecules are electrically switched to a new orientation, the transmission of light through the smectic regions changes. The islands are about 100 micrometers across. Left: Islands of smectic ordering (red) within a liquid crystal film that is otherwise in the nematic phase (orange). ![]()
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