We investigated a control of the crystalline orientation of soluble organic semiconductor single crystals using liquid crystal solvents aligned by the electric field to improve the performance of organic thin-film transistors. We clarified that the semiconductor single crystal grows to the direction parallel to the liquid crystal alignment oriented by the lateral electric field.

Optical compensation of flexible in-plane switching (IPS) mode liquid crystal display (LCD) using polycarbonate substrate with uniaxial optical anisotropy was achieved for wide viewing angle. We theoretically clarified that the slow axis of plastic substrate must be parallel to the absorption axis of polarizer and alignment direction of IPS mode LC. We successfully suppressed a light leakage in the dark state in a wide viewing angle range by fabricated device using uniaxial polycarbonate substrates. These results show that it is possible to realize a high quality flexible LCD using plastic substrates.

A microwave variable delay line using a membrane impregnated with liquid crystal was newly fabricated. By employing the membrane impregnated with liquid crystal to the liquid crystal layer of the delay line, the phase-shift response becomes fast independently of the liquid crystal thickness. Experimental results show that the phase-shift response time of 33 ms, which is two orders of magnitude faster than that of a conventional one, is obtained. The new delay line also exhibits a 270-degree phase-shift and non-dispersive delay characteristics over a wide microwave-frequency range, although a higher control voltage is needed. It is also clarified that the phase-shift characteristics to the control voltage depend on the pore size of the membrane. This membrane impregnated with liquid crystal also enables us to make the variable delay line thin and flexible.

We examined the novel aggregation control of the LC and monomer during formation of the polymer walls from a LC/monomer mixture in order to suppress the presence of the residual monomers and polymer networks in the pixel areas. The method is utilization of the differing wettabilities among LC and monomer molecules on a substrate surface. We patterned a substrate surface with a fluororesin and a polyimide film, and promoted phase separation of the LC and monomer by cooling process. This resulted in the LC and monomer aggregates primarily existing in the pixel areas and non-pixel areas, respectively. Moreover, the polymer-walls structure which was formed in this method partitioned into individual pixels in a lattice region and prevented the LC from flowing. This polymer-walls formation technique will be useful for developing high-quality flexible LCDs.

For exploration of the functional use of dielectric anisotropy of liquid crystals (LCs), we investigated the dynamic response of molecular alignment in a nematic-phase LC cell with compressive force-induced flow behavior. The results showed that the initial alignment and thickness of the LC layer affect the capacitance of the cell when mechanical pressure is applied.

In this paper, we proposed the phase disturbing device using randomly-fluctuated liquid crystal (LC) alignment to reduce the speckle noise generated in holographic displays. Some parameters corresponding to the alignment fluctuation of thick LC layer were quantitatively evaluated, and we clarified the effect of the LC alignment fluctuation with the parameters on speckle noise reduction.

We show that light leakage that occurs in reflective polarizers at large angles of incidence can be suppressed by using anisotropic dielectric multilayers with larger reflective indices in thickness direction and that the interference-included 2×2 Jones matrix method is useful for the investigation of the optical propagation properties of the dielectric multilayers. The thickness of the reflective polarizer can also be reduced by optimizing the distribution of the multilayers in the stack, whilst considering the visual sensitivity. These results indicate that it is possible to realize a high-quality liquid crystal display with wide viewing angles and high light utilization efficiency.

We investigated the effects of a bending stress on the change in phase retardation of curved polycarbonate substrates and optical characteristics of flexible liquid crystal displays (LCDs). We clarified that the change in phase retardation was extremely small even for the substrates with a small radius of curvature, because bending stresses occurred in the inner and upper surfaces are canceled each other out. We compensated for the phase retardation of polycarbonate substrates by a positive C-plate and successfully suppressed light leakage in both non-curved and curved states. These results indicate the feasibility of high-quality flexible LCDs using polycarbonate substrates even in curved states.

We have proposed the novel optical model for layer structure film to precisely control light diffusion angle range. By introducing structure characteristics to the phase grating model, we successfully constructed the novel optical model. In addition, we clarified that difference of refractive indices of layer structure and layer width are important factors for precisely control of light diffusion angle range.

Recently, a control technique of light distribution pattern has become important to improve the functionality and the light utilization efficiency of electronic displays, illumination devices and so on. As a light control technique, polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLCs) have been commonly used so far. However, a precise control of the light diffusion distribution of conventional PDLC has been difficult due to the random polymer network structure, which results in the low light utilization efficiency. On the other hand, reverse-mode PDLCs with homogeneously aligned molecules can anisotropically diffuse light. The reverse-mode PDLC, however, has polarization dependency in the haze value due to homogeneously aligned molecules, which also results in the low light utilization efficiency. Therefore, it is necessary to establish the optimization method of light diffusion distribution without the molecules alignment treatment, and we have proposed a novel PDLC with structure-controlled polymer network which was fabricated by the irradiation with uni-directionally diffused UV light. In this paper, we investigated the effect of the process temperature during UV irradiation on the internal structure and light diffusion distribution of the proposed PDLC. As a result, in case that the mixture during UV irradiation was in isotropic phase, we clarified that the structure-controlled PDLCs with alternating striped LCs/polymer pattern could be obtained because the mixture was sufficiently irradiated with uni-directionally diffused UV light. For the high haze, this structure-controlled PDLC should be fabricated as low temperature as possible with maintaining the mixture in isotropic phase so that the mixture was not a nano-scaled molecular mixing state. Also, this PDLC had no polarization dependency in the haze value and could electrically switch the light distribution pattern between anisotropic light diffusion and light transmission. From the above results, we concluded that the proposed PDLC could precisely control the light diffusion distribution, and realize the high light utilization efficiency.

In this paper, we examined the transfer method of fluororesin as the novel formation method of polymer wall in order to realize the lattice-shaped polymer walls without patterned light irradiation using photomask. We clarified that the transfer method was effective for formation of polymer wall structure on flexible substrate.

We have proposed a mortar-shaped structure to improve response time and alignment uniformity of twisted vertically aligned (TVA) mode liquid crystal displays (LCDs) for high-contrast reflective color LCDs. From the results of the simulation, we clarified that response time, alignment uniformity and viewing angle range of TVA-mode LCDs were improved by controlling the liquid crystal alignment axis-symmetrically in each pixel.

We have developed the high speed bandpass liquid crystal filter with narrow full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 5nm for real-time multi spectral imaging systems. We have successfully achieved short wavelength-switching time of 30ms by the optimization of phase retardation of thin liquid crystal cells.

In this study, we evaluated the electro-optical characteristics and structural stability in curved state of dye-doped liquid crystal (LC) gel film for stretchable displays. As the results, maximum contrast ratio of 6.7:1 and suppression of LC flow were achieved by optimum of blend condition such as gelator and dye concentration.

We developed flexible LC devices using coat-debond polyimide substrates with a low birefringence and etched post spacers, and clarified that flexible LCDs using post spacers with small spacer distance have a high flexibility without degradation of the image quality. This result ensured the feasibility of flexible LCDs using coat-debond method.

We have proposed composite films composed of a molecular-aligned polymer and liquid crystal (LC) for substrate-free liquid crystal displays with high-contrast images. We successfully controlled the molecular alignment of the LC and formed molecular-aligned LC droplets in the polymer by controlling the fluidity of the LC/monomer mixture and the curing rate of the monomer.

We developed flexible liquid crystal devices using ultra-thin polyimide substrates and bonding polymer spacers, and discussed the effects of polymer spacer structure on the cell thickness uniformity of flexible LCDs. We clarified that the lattice-shaped polymer spacer is effective to stabilize the cell thickness by suppressing the flow of the liquid crystal during bending process.

We proposed the simulation method of reconstructed holographic images in considering phase distribution in the small pixels of liquid crystal spatial light modulator (LC-SLM) and clarified zero-order diffraction appeared on the reconstructed images when the phase distribution in a single pixel is non-uniform. These results are useful for design of fine LC-SLM for realizing wide-viewing-angle holographic displays.

We investigated effects of ultraviolet illuminance and ratio of high- to low-refractive-index monomers on the layer structure and light diffusion properties of light-diffusing films with alternating polymer layer structures. We clarified that an increasing difference in refractive index between alternating polymer layers induced an increase in the diffusion angle.