Depolarized light scattering from liquid crystals as a factor for black level light leakage in liquid-crystal displays

Abstract

Depolarized light scattering due to thermally excited orientational fluctuations of liquid-crystal directors was investigated in the context of the black level light leakage in liquid-crystal displays. Particular attention was given on the comparison between homogeneous and homeotropic liquid-crystal alignments which are both used as black states of liquid-crystal displays. The homeotropic alignment was found to have lower light-scattering intensity and less light leakage than the homogeneous alignment in the small scattering angle regions. The dependency of the scattering intensity on the cell gap and the extrapolation length was also evaluated. The cell gap and the extrapolation length were found to have a large influence.