Wideband quarter-wave liquid crystal cell with wide viewing angle for the reflective mode with single polarizer

Abstract

In this letter, the authors propose an optical configuration for the reflective liquid crystal (LC) cell with single polarizer, which can show the wideband property for high contrast in oblique incidence. The cell consists of a biaxial, a half-wave retarder, a quarter-wave LC cell, and a positive C plate in addition to a reflector. They optimize the configuration of the reflective LC cell on the Poincaré sphere using trigonometric calculation. In order to verify the optical performance, the authors experimentally compare the optical characteristics of the proposed LC cell with those of the conventional LC cell.