E-Paper Displays

8Optically Rewritable Liquid Crystal Display

Wanlong Zhang^1,2, Abhishek Srivastava², Vladimir Chigrinov², and Hoi‐Sing Kwok²

¹ Nanophotonics Research Centre, Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Micro‐Scale Optical Information Technology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China

² State Key Laboratory of Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong S. A. R., China

8.1 Introduction

The idea behind electronic paper (e‐paper) is to store and display information on a paper‐like carrier with ultra‐low or zero power consumption during the non‐updating period. Flexibility, readability, and multi‐functionality are the main expectations for e‐paper [1–3]. In particular, electrophoretic displays (EPDs), in which charged particles are electrically controlled, are the most widely used technology for e‐paper, with applications in e‐readers, shelf labels, and so forth [4–7]. However, with liquid crystal displays (LCDs) dominating the flat panel display market for decades, several liquid crystal (LC)‐based candidates have also been developed for e‐paper, the most mature being cholesteric LCDs [8–11], zenithal bistable devices (ZBDs) [12–14] and bistable nematic (BiNem) displays [15–18]. Generally, the power consumption of traditional LCDs is related to the driving frequency, and the applied voltage on individual pixels must be maintained even for a steady image. However, similar to EPDs' inherent behavior of bistability, LC e‐paper ...