The possibility of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) submodule was evaluated as an independent power source that can drive a smart liquid crystal window (SLW) that selectively blocks sunlight when electricity is applied. In order to save energy and increase the functionality of buildings, SLW operation was supplied directly from DSSC submodule, rather than connecting to the existing power system and external power sources. It was confirmed that the SLW can control light transmittance through self-generation using the DSSC submodule composed of 6 cells at low light of 2,500 lux. These results imply that there is a high possibility of combining smart windows and DSSCs suitable for window-type building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems. DSSCs, which can self-generate power in low light, are expected to increase their usability in urban BIPV systems through combination with smart window technology.

Novel self-illuminated smart windows were fabricated consisting of Cu-doped ZnS (ZnS:Cu) powder and polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC). This smart window shows not only switchable transparency but also self-illumination without any attachable luminous body. Its electro-optical characteristics, transmittance, and luminance were investigated in relation to various applied voltages and composition ratios. The optical transmittance and luminous intensity increased with increasing applied voltages. However, the optical transmittance decreased with increasing ZnS:Cu powder content. One of the self-illuminated smart windows, which was fabricated with 9 wt% of ZnS:Cu, achieved the optical transmittance of 60.5% (at 550 nm) and the luminance of 11.0 cd/m² at 100 V. This smart window could be used as a normal switchable smart window in daytime and light-emitting signage at night.

The field of liquid crystal display (LCD) is constantly in the spotlight and the process of depositing an alignment layer in the LCD manufacturing process is very important to obtain excellent performance such as low-power driving and high-speed response to improve LCD performance. Therefore, research on liquid crystal (LC) alignment is being actively conducted. When manufacturing LCD, it is necessary to consider the effect of the alignment layer thickness as one of the factors affecting various LCD performances. In addition, previous studies confirmed the LC alignment characteristics correlate with the rotation speed in the spin coating process. Therefore, the electro-optical properties of the LCD were investigated by manufacturing a polyimide alignment layer by varying the rotation speed in the spin coating process in this study. It was confirmed that the thickness of the polyimide alignment layer was controlled according to the spin coating conditions. The average transmittances of anti-parallel LC cells at the spin coating speed of 2,500 rpm and 3,000 rpm are about 60%, which indicates that the LC cell has relatively higher performance. At the spin coating speed of 3,000 rpm, the voltage-transmittance curve of twisted nematic (TN) LC cell was below 1.5 V, which means that the TN LC cell operated at a low power. In addition, high-speed operating characteristics were confirmed with a response time of less than 30 ms. From these derived data, we confirmed that the ideal spin coating speed is 3,000 rpm. And these results provide an optimized polyimide alignment layer process when considering enhanced future LCD manufacturing.

We fabricated BiAlO thin film by a solution process with a brush coating to be used as liquid crystal (LC) alignment layer. Solution-processed BiAlO was coated on the glass substrate by brush process. Prepared thin films were annealed at different temperatures of 80℃, 180℃, and 280℃. To verify whether the BiAlO film was formed properly, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis was performed on Bi and Al. Using a crystal rotation method by polarized optical microscopy, LC alignment state was evaluated. At the annealing temperature of 280℃, the uniform homogenous LC alignment was achieved. To reveal the mechanism of LC alignment by brush coating, field emission scanning electron microscope was used. Through this analysis, spin-coated and brush coated film surface were compared. It was revealed that physical anisotropy was induced by brush coating at a high annealing temperature. Particles were aligned in one direction along which brush coating was made, resulting in a physical anisotropy that affects a uniform LC alignment. Therefore, it was confirmed that brush coating combined with BiAlO thin film annealed at high temperature has a significant potential for LC alignment.

Smart windows are used as windows and doors to determine the cooling and heating efficiency of a building. They have characteristics that can increase the energy efficiency of a building, which leads to energy savings. In addition, smart windows can control the amount of light transmitted from the external environment of a building to the interior of a building according to the needs of the user. In this study, a 297×210 mm² liquid crystal cell capable of controlling light transmittance was fabricated using a liquid crystal device as an optical shutter. The effect of driving voltage on the transmittance and the effect of the thermal environment on the driving stability were analyzed. We confirmed the applicability of using smart windows as exterior building materials.

We investigated a solution-driven Yttrium Tin Oxide (YSnO) film that was imprinted using a parallel nanostructure as a liquid crystal (LC) alignment layer. The imprinting process was conducted at the annealing temperature of 100℃. To evaluate the effect of this process, we conducted surface analyses including atomic force microscopy (AFM). During imprinting, the surface roughness was reduced, and anisotropic characteristics were observed. Planar LC alignment was observed at a pretilt angle of 0.22° on YSnO film. Surface anisotropy induced by imprinting method forces LC to align along the direction of the parallel nanostructure, which is an alternative to conventional polyimide treated using a rubbing process.

We demonstrate an alignment technology using an imprinting process on an inorganic NiOx film. The aligned nanopattern was fabricated on a silicon wafer by laser interference lithography. The aligned nano pattern was then imprinted onto the sol-gel driven NiOx film using an imprinting process at an annealing temperature of 150℃. After the imprinting process, parallel grooves had been formed on the NiOx film. Atomic force microscopy and water contact angle measurements were performed to confirm the parallel groove on the NiOx film. The grooves caused liquid crystal alignment through geometric restriction, similar to grooves formed by the rubbing process on polyimide. The liquid crystal cell exhibited a pretilt angle of 0.2°, which demonstrated homogeneous alignment.

The alignment characteristics of liquid crystal (LC) molecules on a solution-derived lanthanum zinc oxide (LZO) film under ion-beam irradiation were demonstrated. Using the solution process, an LZO film was fabricated on the glass substrate and cured at 100℃. Afterwards, ion-beam irradiation was performed following the LC alignment method. Using this film, an LC cell was fabricated and the characteristics of the LC alignment were verified. Cross polarizing microscopy and the crystal rotation method were used to investigate the alignment state of the LC molecules on the LZO films. Furthermore, field emission scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used to explore the effect of the ion-beam irradiation on the LZO film. Through these, it was confirmed that the ion-beam irradiation induced surface modification, which demonstrated anisotropic physical and chemical surface characteristics. Due to this, uniform LC alignment was achieved. Finally, the residual DC and anchoring energy of the LC cell based on the LZO films were measured using a capacitance-voltage curve.

We investigated a solution-derived Y₂O₃ film treated by ion beam (IB) irradiation as a liquid crystal (LC) alignment layer. With IB irradiation, homogeneous LC alignment was achieved irrespective of the annealing temperature. To verify the effect of IB irradiation, we conducted surface analyses such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). As Y₂O₃ is a high-k material, the electro-optical properties of the twisted nematic (TN) cells were superior to those of conventional TN cells based on a rubbed polymer, with an LC rising time of 4.1ms and falling time of 2.9ms. The IB-irradiated Y₂O₃ is a good alternative as an alignment layer for fast-switching TN LC displays.

Non-emissive LCDs need a backlight, and have difficulty implementing wide viewing angles due to differences in phase retardation depending on the behavior of the liquid crystals. Although wide viewing angles are good characteristics for devices such as TVs, they are not good for mobile devices. In this paper, we propose ways to design diffusers with ELC lenses to achieve wide and narrow viewing angles depending on the circumstances. A study was conducted on optimizing the design of a liquid lens diffuser with the same light as that for an OLED, by extracting design factors that affect the performance of the diffuser and applying the Taguchi method to them.

In this study, we proposed an optical compensation method to improve the symmetricity of contrast ratio for wide viewing angle IPS (in-plane switching) LCD. First, the phase retardation depending on the thickness of compensation film is calculated, and then the phase change is presented at the Poincare sphere. The phase retardation and the polarization state of the light passing through the optical elements are caculated by using the EJMM (extended Jones matrix method). In addition, the transmittance and the contrast countour are also calculated by using the Berremann``s 4x4 matrix method. The simulation is carried out for a IPS LC cell with positive A/C/A compensation film. From the standard deviation of the contrast ratio, we confirmed the symmetricity at each viewing angle is inversely proportional to the standard deviation and calculated the optimum design condition of the uniaxial compensation film for the IPS LCD.

In this paper, by using a dual frequency liquid crystal material, we propose a liquid crystaldevice with a fast response characteristics. The dual frequency liquid crystal material has a positivedielectric anisotropy value at a low frequency. With a high frequency, the dielectric anisotropy becomesnegative. Therefore, the relaxation process is governed by not only the elastic deformation, but also thedielectric interaction. The measured decay time and rise time were 0.88 ms and 0.33 ms, respectively.

Effect of multi-stacked layer (MSL), 0.1 mol (M) and 0.3 mol (M) hafnium oxide (HfO2)alignment layers were fabricated via a solution-process for LCs orientation. The solutions were spin-coated and annealed in a furnace. MSL consists of three sub-layers using 0.1 M solution,mono-layer (ML) is composed of 0.3 M HfO2 solution. Then ion-beam irradiation was treated with 1.8keV for 2 min. HfO2-based LC cells were investigated through photographs, pre-tilt angle using crystal rotation method, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurement, and surface roughness using atomic force microscopy(AFM) for their characteristic research. Good LC orientation characteristics were observed on MSL HfO2 surface. The LC alignment mechanism on MSL HfO2 and ML HfO2 surfaces was attributed to van der Waals (VDW) interaction between the LC molecular and substrate surface.

Apart from the deposition of alignment layer, alignment process needs to be involved for alignment of liquid crystal (LC) molecules. To simplify manufacturing process, several method were used such as rubbing, ion-beam irradiation, UV irradiation, and lithography. But, eventually it needs another treatment for LC alignment. Here, we suggested Si induced polyimide (PI) alignment layer at low temperature. Using this method, we are able to eliminate the alignment process and found that the alignment and electro-optic performance are much better than that of the rubbed PI LC cells. Compared to the rubbed PI cells, the response time was decreased by 70% and C-V characteristics have hysteresis-free.

From UV irradiation, we achieved homeotropic liquid crystal alignment on blended photo-polymer layer which is composed of polyvinyl-cinnamate (PVCi) and homeotropic polyimide (PI). From vertical alignment (VA) mode, we measured threshold voltages by various PVCi doping concentration. Also, the rise time and fall time of VA cells were measured to verify the best doping concentration. Transmittance curves showed about 70% value between 380 nm and 780 nm wavelength which mean visible region.

We present the results of a study of the polarizing photovoltaic (PV) effects in an aligned polymer bulk heterojuction PV layer. The fairly uniform in-plane uniaxial alignment of the PV layer with a macroscopic axial orientational order parameter of 0.40 was achieved by means of a simple rubbing technique. Moreover, reflective polarizing PSCs having the aligned PV layers were applied to power-generating reflective type liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which exhibited a maximum contrast ratio of 1.7. These results form a promising foundation for various energy harvesting polarization dependent opto-electrical LCD device applications.

In this paper, we have studied on the optimal design of the optical compensation film for the TN-LCDs. To have wide viewing angle panels, several methods such as multi-domain method, optical path method, and phase compensation method have been proposed. Among these methods, this paper focused on the phase compensation method. In the phase compensation method, the phase retardation generated from the optical birefringence for the off-axis incident is compensated by using optical films with refractive anisotropy. To compensate the phase retardation of the TN-LCDs, we have proposed design concept for the biaxial optical films and analyzed the optical performance for the proposed structures. The calculation of the dynamic motion of the liquid crystals was based on the Ericksen-Leslie theory and the optical performance of the TN-LCD was calculated from the Extended Jones Matrix Method. From the results, we have confirmed that the optical characteristics of the TN-LCDs with the biaxial films have been improved considerably compared with the TN-LCDs compensated by the combination of the uniaxial films.

We investigated the dielectric and mechanical properties of ceramic polymer composite xBNT - (1-x)LCP (x= 0, 10, 20, 30, 40 vol.%). The disk shaped BNT (BaNd2Ti4O12) - LCP (liquid crystal polymer) composite samples were prepared by compression molding method. With increasing the BNT content in composites from 10 to 40 vol.%, the dielectric constant increased but the dielectric loss as well as bending strength of composites reduced. These composites were well described with modified Lichtenecker`s model having k = 0.392 and 0.303 for the first and second ball milled BNT filled composites, which means that the BNT filler in composites are well dispersed. The dielectric constant of the composite comprised of the second milled BNT (D50 = 1.39 um) was higher that of the composite of the first milled BNT (D50= 2.45 um), which seems to be related with the different particle size and dispersion of BNT fillers in LCP matrix. The bending strength of the composite containing the second milled BNT was superior to that of the composite of the first milled BNT.

In this study, we proposed a novel electrode structure for the fringe field switching (FFS) mode LCD and performed a three-dimensional computer simulation to calculate the optical transmittance for the new structure. In the simulation Erickson-leslie equation and Berreman 4×4 matrix were used for obtaining the director distribution profiles of liquid crystal molecules and the electro-optical characteristics, respectively. Considering the complexity of the motional equation of the liquid crystal molecules, FDM (finite difference method) was used as a numerical method. From the results, We revealed that the light transmission of the newly designed pixel structure is expended to the edge of the pixel electrode. We also confirmed that the light transmittance increased more than 13% compared to that of the conventional electrode structure.