High performance liquid crystals for vehicle displays

We report three liquid crystal (LC) mixtures with a wide nematic range (−40°C to ~100°C), small visco-elastic coefficient and low activation energy for vehicular displays. Physical properties at different temperatures were characterized. These LCs greatly improve the performance of different display devices in a car: 1) for head-up projection using liquid-crystal-onsilicon with an average gray-to-gray (GTG) response time less than 1 ms at an elevated temperature. 2) The average GTG response time is maintained at ~10 ms for fringing field switching LCD at T = 0°C and also ~10 ms for twisted nematic LCD at T = −20°C. ©2016 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (160.3710) Liquid crystals; (230.3720) Liquid-crystal devices. References and links 1. P. M. Knoll, “The use of displays in automotive applications,” J. Soc. Inf. Disp. 5(3), 165–172 (1997). 2. M. H. Schuck, D. J. McKnight, and K. M. Johnson, “Automotive head-up display using liquid-crystal-on-silicon displays,” J. Soc. Inf. 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Introduction
Several liquid crystal display (LCD) devices have been widely used in a vehicle [1], such as head-up display (HUD) [2], wearable display, instrument cluster display, center information display, and entertainment display [3].Mixed-mode twisted nematic (MTN) [4], twisted nematic (TN) [5] and fringe field switching (FFS) [6][7][8] are the main liquid crystal (LC) modes employed in the vehicular display system.For examples, 1) MTN is commonly used for liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) reflective projection displays (e.g.HUD and wearable displays) [9], since it exhibits high transmittance, low operation voltage and small fringing field effect [10].2) Transmissive TN LCD is employed in instrument cluster displays since the device requires fast response time and high brightness.The viewing angle of TN mode is relatively narrow.However, the instrument cluster display only shows information to the driver, thus narrow viewing angle is acceptable.3) FFS LCD is applied to center information display (e.g.Global Positioning System (GPS)) and entertainment displays since information sharing, high image quality and touch panel are preferred for those displays.FFS mode shows advantages in wide view, weak color shift and pressure resistance for touch panels.However, there are two major challenges for vehicular displays in the extreme environment [11]: 1) it requires an LC with high clearing point (T c ~100°C).For other LCD applications (e.g.TV, desktop and smartphones), a somewhat lower clearing point (~80°C) is still acceptable [12,13].While for displays inside a car, the temperature (T) could easily exceed 80°C during summer time.2) The displays should remain operational at cold temperature, at least the LC should not freeze at −40°C, while keeping a reasonably fast response time below 0°C [14].Because during winter time, the displays (e.g. the instrument cluster display and GPS) should remain functional before the car is warmed up.According to European car standard, the response time should be < 200ms at −20°C and < 300 ms at −30°C, respectively.But it is not fast enough to avoid image degradation.The general required operation temperature is from −30°C to 85°C and the storage temperature is from −40°C to 90°C for vehicle display applications.To boost clearing point, three-ring and four-ring LC compounds are commonly used, which dramatically increase the visco-elastic coefficient and activation energy [15,16].As a result, LC response time could be as sluggish as several hundreds of millisecond and the display image quality is severely degraded.For electric vehicles, low operation voltage is also very important considering the power consumption.
In this paper, we report three high performance LC mixtures with an extraordinary wide nematic range (−40°C to ~100°C), small visco-elastic coefficient, and low activation energy for automobile displays.Physical properties at different temperatures and wavelengths are characterized.We also explored these LC mixtures for different applications.For HUD projection display and wearable display, we obtain submillisecond average gray-to-gray (GTG) response time (~0.3 ms) in a MTN LCOS.By applying LCs to FFS and TN LCDs, the response time is less than 20 ms for FFS at 0°C and TN at −20°C, respectively.With overdrive voltage [17], the average GTG response time is further reduced by ~2X (< 10ms) at these low temperatures.

Experiment and results
Table 1 lists the chemical structures of compounds employed in the LC mixture, designated as MCRI.Four major ingredients are included.The homologues (different alkyl chain length R) of Compound 1 show high birefringence (Δn) and large dielectric anisotropy (Δε > 25).However, their visco-elastic coefficient and activation energy are relatively large.To reduce viscosity, we doped ~50 wt% non-polar diluters (i.e.Compound 2 [18,19]).Compounds 3 and 4 (~30 wt%) are added to obtain high clearing point (T c ) and wide nematic range.We also prepared other two LCs (designated as DIC-57F-15 and DIC-57F-16) with different viscoelastic constant and Δε, which can be achieved by adjusting the concentration of non-polar diluters (Compound 2).The phase transition temperatures were measured by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC, TA instruments Q100).Remarkably, the melting points (T m ) are below −40°C (due to the limit of our DSC) and T c ~100°C for all three LCs, which show high durability in harsh environments.To determine Δε, we measured the capacitance of a homogeneous and a homeotropic cell using an HP-4274 multi-frequency LCR meter.The measured phase transition temperatures and dielectric anisotropy of three LCs are summarized in Table 2.

Birefringence
To characterize the physical properties at different temperatures, we filled each LC into a homogeneous cell with cell gap (d ~5μm).A Merck mixture (MLC-6241-000) with similar T c (~99°C) was included as a benchmark for comparison.This is not the best mixture developed by Merck for practical applications but it is what we can find in our lab.The cells were mounted in a Linkam LTS 350 Large Area Heating/Freezing Stage controlled by TMS94 Temperature Programmer and then sandwiched between two crossed polarizers.A 1 kHz square-wave AC voltage was applied to LC cells.The probing light sources were a tunable Argon ion laser (λ = 457nm, 488nm, and 514nm) and a He-Ne laser (λ = 632.8nm).The birefringence can be obtained from the phase retardation δ = 2πdΔn/λ [20].We also measured their Δn at T = 10 ~90°C as Fig. 1(a) shows.The dots are experimental data and solid lines are theoretical fittings [21] with where Δn o is the extrapolated birefringence at T = 0K and the exponent β is a material constant.DIC-57F-15 shows a higher birefringence than other mixtures because it contains more compounds with a longer conjugation length (e.g.Compounds 1 and 3 in Table 1).High birefringence helps to reduce the required cell gap for achieving fast response time.The Δn of DIC-57F-16 and MCRI is ~0.1, which helps minimize the color dispersion of the LCD.To investigate the electro-optic performance with different colors, we also fitted the measured Δn (dots in Fig. 1(b)) at each wavelength with the single-band dispersion equation [22]: Here, G is a proportionality constant and λ* is the mean resonance wavelength.The fitting parameters in Fig. 1(a) and (b) are summarized in Table 3. Once G and λ* are obtained, birefringence at any wavelength can be calculated from Eq. ( 2).Our results are: Δn = 0.122, 0.117 and 0.105 at λ = 550nm for DIC-57F-15, DIC-57F-16 and MCRI, respectively.These values are included in Table 2 and will be used in the device simulation later.From the response time measurement, we can extract the visco-elastic coefficient (γ 1 /K 11 ) of the LC mixture [23].Figure 2 depicts the γ 1 /K 11 from −30°C to 90°C, in which dots represent experimental data.As the temperature decreases, γ 1 /K 11 increases exponentially.The solid lines are the fitting curves with following equation:

Visco-elastic coefficient
In Eq. (3), A is a proportionality constant, k B is the Boltzmann constant, E a is the activation energy, and β is the material constant, which has been obtained through Eq. ( 2).Table 3 lists the fitting parameters for all four LC mixtures studied.Our new LCs exhibit a smaller γ 1 /K 11 than MLC-6241-000 at any temperature.Besides, the new LCs have similar γ 1 /K 11 at T~35°C.However, MCRI has the smallest activation energy and slowest rising rate as the temperature decreases.The activation energy (E a ) is affected by several parameters such as molecular structure and conformation, and intermolecular interactions [23].To reduce the viscosity at room temperature, MCRI employs a higher concentration of non-polar diluters (Compound 2 in Table 1).As a result, its E a is relatively small, which in turn contributes to a mild increase of visco-elastic coefficients, as described in Eq. ( 3).Therefore, the visco-elastic coefficient of MCRI is the smallest at low temperature.While, DIC-57F-15 exhibits a smaller γ 1 /K 11 at T > 35°C due to a larger activation energy.So its γ 1 /K 11 deceases dramatically at elevated temperatures.Therefore, DIC-57F-16 and MCRI show better performance especially faster response time at low temperatures.The response time is proportional to γ 1 /K 11 and d 2 .DIC-57F-15 shows the highest Δn among four LCs.As a result, the required cell gap of DIC-57F-15 is the thinnest to achieve the same phase retardation.With a thinner cell gap and smaller γ 1 /K 11 at elevated temperatures, DIC-57-15 is more suitable for projection displays, whose operation temperature is 35-55°C, depending on the employed light source (LED or arc lamp).We will discuss their applications later.

Elastic constants K 11 and K 22
Elastic constants affect the threshold voltage and response time of a LC device.For the above mentioned MTN, TN and FFS LCDs, splay (K 11 ) and twist (K 22 ) elastic constants are more important than the bend (K 33 ).We measured K 11 from the threshold voltage (V th ) based on the voltage-dependent transmittance (VT) curve since V th is expressed as [24][25][26]: where ε 0 is the permittivity of free space.Because γ 1 /K 11 has been obtained by measuring the free relaxation time, we can extract the rotational viscosity (γ 1 ) easily.Results are also included in Table 2.
To obtain K 22 , Xu et al. [27] derived following semi-empirical equation to describe the optical decay time of an In-Plane Switching (IPS) cell: In experiment, we prepared four IPS cells whose substrates were coated with a thin polyimide (PI) layer to provide strong anchoring energy.The cells were sandwiched between two crossed linear polarizers with the bottom polarizer's transmission axis parallel to the LC rubbing direction.First, we measured the VT curve of each mixture at T = 25°C and biased the LC cell at peak transmission voltage.Then we removed the bias voltage instantaneously and recorded the transient decay time with a digital oscilloscope.Using Eq. ( 5), we can calculate K 22 .Results are also listed in Table 2.

Discussion
As Table 2 shows, a smaller Δε mixture tends to have a lower γ 1 because it consists of a higher concentration of diluters (compound 2 in Table 1).Diluters are nonpolar short-chain compounds with a very low viscosity.There is a linear relationship between Δε and γ 1 for LCs with T c ~80°C and Δn~0.1 [19].These LCs have been widely used in TVs, smartphones and wearable displays.−Δε LC shows a much higher rotational viscosity than that of + Δε LC.This is because more dipole groups are needed for a −Δε LC to achieve the same |Δε| as a + Δε LC.As a result, the compound becomes bulkier and heavier, leading to a higher rotational viscosity.On the other hand, to increase the clearing point of a + Δε LC mixture, more three-or four-ring structures (e.g.Compounds 3 and 4 in Table 1) are required.Thus, a + Δε LC with a higher T c often exhibits a larger γ 1 .

Submillisecond-response color sequential projection displays
Color sequential LCOS has been widely used in projection displays [28][29][30] and wearable displays, such as Google Glass.By eliminating the color filters, both resolution density and brightness are tripled.However, fast response time (< 1 ms) is required to suppress the color breakup and keep high image quality.Besides, the LCOS panel could operate at T = 35-55°C due to thermal effect from the high power arc lamp or LED.As Fig. 2 depicts, DIC-57F-15 shows the lowest visco-elastic coefficient and it requires the thinnest cell gap (i.e.highest birefringence) when T > 35°C.Therefore, we use a commercial LCD simulator DIMOS 2.0 to calculate the electro-optic properties of a MTN-LCOS with DIC-57F-15.In a MTN cell, the LC directors are twisted by 90° from top to bottom substrates (i.e.MTN-90°).From Fig. 1(a) and (b) and fitting parameters (Table 3), we found that at T = 55°C, Δn = 0.112 at λ = 550 nm.The measured Δε is 4.7 at T = 55°C.The other simulation parameters were set as d = 1.95 μm and γ 1 /K 11 = 2.10 ms/μm 2 for T = 55°C.The angle between front LC directors and the PBS polarization axis is set at 20° to maximize the reflectance and the initial pretilt angle is ~2°.MTN-90° modulates the light reflectance by a mixed effect between polarization rotation and phase retardation.A reflector is placed on the inner surface of the MTN-90° cell.For blue (B) and red (R) lights, we used Δn = 0.112 and 0.105, respectively, while keeping the same cell gap. Figure 4 depicts the voltagedependent reflectance (VR) curves for the RGB colors.A good dark state is achieved at V ≈4.5 V rms .Thus, only single gamma curve is needed for driving the RGB frames.4 summarizes the calculated gray-to-gray (GTG) response time.Here, we divided the VR curve at λ = 550 nm into 8 gray levels and calculated the response time between different gray levels.Both rise time and decay time are defined as 10%-90% reflectance change.The calculated rise time is 1.00 ms and decay time is 0.43 ms between gray levels 1 and 8.By applying overdrive voltage, we obtained average GTG rise time is 0.50 ms and decay time is 0.20 ms, which are ~2X faster than the response time between gray levels 1 and 8.For projection displays using LED light sources, the chasis temperature is ~35°C.Based on Fig. 2, the extrapolated GTG rise time is ~1.00 ms and decay time ~0.40 ms.Such a fast response time would eliminate the color breakup of the color sequential LCOS projection display.Based on Fig. 2, the response time at low temperature can be calculated.Table 5 shows the free relaxation time of FFS and TN modes at low temperatures.Our new LCs show a favorably small activation energy, leading to a much slower rising rate on visco-elastic coefficient as the temperature decreases.At 0°C, the extrapolated decay time of MCRI in FFS cell is still within 20ms, which is ~3.8X faster than that of MLC-6241-000.Besides, the rise time (i.e.free relaxation) of TN with MCRI is less than 20ms at T = −20°C (for MLC-6241-000, it is longer than 100ms).Thus, the response time of TN mode is >10X faster than that European car standard requires (i.e.200ms at −20°C and 300ms at −30°C).By applying the overdrive voltage, the average GTG response time is reduced by ~2X.Therefore, by employing our new LCs, the response time is within ~10ms for FFS at T = 0°C and TN at T = −20°C.This is particularly important for vehicular displays at cold weather.

Conclusion
We have developed and characterized 3 new nematic LC mixtures with high clearing point, small visco-elastic coefficient and low activation energy.With a wide nematic range, they can meet the challenges for harsh environments of vehicular displays.By applying these mixtures to different LCD modes, we obtain following attractive features: 1) the average GTG response time is < 1ms with MTN mode for HUD and wearable displays at T > 35 °C.2) The average GTG response time is maintained very fast (<10ms) for FFS at T = 0 °C and TN at T = −20 °C.As Table 5 shows, there are still some technical challenges for vehicle displays, such as faster response time at low temperatures for reducing image blurs, high ambient contrast ratio for daylight operations, and high transmittance for high brightness and low power consumption.

Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1.(a) Temperature dependent birefringence and (b) dispersion curves at T = 25°C for the LC mixtures studied.Dots are measured data and solid lines are fitting curves with Eq. (1) and Eq.(2) in (a) and (b), respectively.

Fig. 2 .
Fig. 2. Temperature dependent visco-elastic coefficients.Dots are experimental data and solid lines are the fitting curves with Eq. (3).

Fig. 4 .
Fig. 4. Voltage-dependent reflectance curves for R, G, B colors.The cell gap is 1.95 μm and T = 55 °C Table4summarizes the calculated gray-to-gray (GTG) response time.Here, we divided the VR curve at λ = 550 nm into 8 gray levels and calculated the response time between different gray levels.Both rise time and decay time are defined as 10%-90% reflectance change.The calculated rise time is 1.00 ms and decay time is 0.43 ms between gray levels 1 and 8.By applying overdrive voltage, we obtained average GTG rise time is 0.50 ms and decay time is 0.20 ms, which are ~2X faster than the response time between gray levels 1 and 8.For projection displays using LED light sources, the chasis temperature is ~35°C.Based on Fig.2, the extrapolated GTG rise time is ~1.00 ms and decay time ~0.40 ms.Such a fast response time would eliminate the color breakup of the color sequential LCOS projection display.

3. 2
Fast-response TN and FFS LCDs at extreme environmentsHere, we simulate the electro-optic properties of FFS and TN cells employing DIC-57F-16 and MCRI with a commercial LCD simulator DIMOS.2D, as these two LCs show small visco-elastic coefficients at T < 35°C and low activation energy.According to the dispersion curve, Δn ~0.12 and 0.11 for DIC-57F-16 and MCRI at λ = 550 nm.For MLC-6241-000, the estimated Δn ~ 0.09 at λ = 550nm.For FFS mode, we set dΔn ~340 nm for each mixture in order to achieve fast response time and low operation voltage.The same cell parameters are used in the simulation for fair comparison: electrode width w = 2μm, electrode gap l = 3μm, pretilt angle ~2° and rubbing angle ~10°.For TN mode, dΔn = 480 nm to satisfy first Gooch-Tarry minimum and to achieve high transmittance.The cells are sandwiched between two crossed polarizers and front rubbing direction is parallel to the axis of polarizer.Figures5(a) and 5(c) depict the voltage-dependent transmittance for FFS and TN cells, respectively.In both modes, MLC-6241-000 shows the lowest operation voltage due to its largest Δɛ.The onstate voltage of DIC-57F-16 is 6.0 V rms and MCRI is 6.5 V rms in FFS mode, which are still acceptable for vehicular displays.For TN, a good dark state is obtained at V~5 V rms for both new LCs.Figures5(b) and 5(d) depict the response time of FFS and TN LCDs at T = 25°C.The time-dependent transmittance curves of two newly developed LCs are almost the same because of their similar birefringence and visco-elastic coefficient.The response time of our LCs is much faster than that of MLC-6241-000 in both modes.Moreover, the faster response time contributes to a higher overall transmittance and lower image crosstalk.For FFS mode, the response time [rise, decay] of DIC-57F-16 is [9.7ms, 9.3ms], while the response time of MLC-6241-000 is [31.3ms,31.2ms].TN shows faster response time than FFS because it utilizes K 11 while FFS mainly uses K 22 .Thus, the response time of our LCs is [2.5ms, 5.0ms] for TN, which is ~3.6X faster than that of MLC-6241-000 ([9.0ms, 19.0ms]).