Liquid crystal cell asymmetrically anchored for high transmittance and triggered with a vertical field for fast switching.

The optical performance of an asymmetrically surface-anchored liquid crystal (LC) cell driven with three-terminal electrodes is demonstrated. The transmittance of an asymmetrically anchored cell is considerably higher than that of a symmetrically anchored cell. However, the slow response of an asymmetrically anchored cell makes its practical application difficult. In this work, we demonstrate that the slowest GTG response time from a high to low grey level in an asymmetrically anchored cell can be reduced to less than 0.7 ms by applying a vertical trigger pulse with three-terminal electrodes while maintaining the high transmittance of an asymmetrically anchored cell.