This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes to develop low power consumption bistable liquid crystal display (LCD) with capability of color and video display based on micro-engineered surface alignment (MESA) technology, for application of e-book/e-paper and other low power display such as rewritable price tags and cell phones. The uniqueness of MESA-LCD is that it is a surface-induced bistable display thus power consumption is extremely low for displaying text or static picture, meanwhile, both the video display and color display can be easily achieved whenever it is necessary. Also as a MESA-LCD is compatible to the current mature LCD production process, it has a low cost unmatchable for other technologies. The key Phase-I objective is to demonstrate the switching voltage reduction and contrast Improvement, to enable the success of commercialization success in Phase-II. The phase-I objective will be achieved through research on optimization of photoalignment materials and processes, and fabrication of a phase-I concept-proving prototype. With success of this project, e-book with low power consumption, and capability of video display and color display will be enabled. Meanwhile, this research project improves the understanding of the interaction of the light and micro-structured surface materials.
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to bring to market various low-power display products including e-book and e-paper with full function of color display and video display with application in education and entertainment, for people who are now living in Information Era. This project is mainly targeting a fast growing e-book/e-paper market which has been proven by the launch of the Kindle e-book products by Amazon. The proposed MESA technology can also be used for retail, advertisement, medical display and military application where power consumption is a concern, with potential products including solar powered rewritable price tags, cell phones and other hand-hold devices, and smart ID/credit/medical cards. Technology areas of this project cover liquid crystal/polymer materials, LCD process, and interaction of the light and micro-structured surface materials. Market sector of this project include education, entertainment, retail, advertisement, medical display and military.
The objective of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop and commercialize the low power consumption, bistable memory nematic liquid crystal display (LCD) devices for e-book and mobile applications based on the micro-engineered surface alignment (MESA) technology. During the Phase I project period, we have successfully met the Phase I objective and demonstrated the feasibility of MESA technology through: • We have provided a desired approach to manipulate the induced anisotropy in the alignment layer thus to produce weak anchoring alignment when the photoalignment film has been fully exposed to UV light to completely deplete the photosensitive chemical groups; • We have carried out a systematic study to characterize the anchoring energy as a function of the UV exposure conditions, which shows a clear path to future optimization of the MESA technology in Phase II. The measurement data of anchoring energy and threshold driving voltage are summarized in Fig.1. • We have further made a breakthrough to fabricate a bistable display sample (Fig.2) on a plastic (PET) film substrate based on MESA technology, and demonstrated the voltage reduction of more than 10 times. The fabrication of the sample is based on a newly designed maskless pattern generator (MPG) (Fig.3). • We have also analyzed the performance of the MESA display devices through simulation, which showed the feasibility of MESA technology to practical application in ebook and portable display due to its high contrast ratio and good view angle performance. The broader impacts/commercial potential will be that will be that the MESA-LCD related technologies will benefit from the low power, high contrast ratio, vivid color, and high resolution. Success of this project will enable a high performance and low cost MESA-LCD that have a significant market opportunity in e-book and other mobile devices to bring users information and entertainment, offer users a convergent display experience, with paper-like readability, full color display, significantly less power consumption, video-rate response times.
