Reflective Cholesteric Displays from Conducting Polymer Substrates.

There is a great deal of interest in reflective cholesteric liquid crystal displays Ch-LCDs because they are lightweight, low power flat-panel displays. Furthermore, Ch-LCDs can be made bistable which allows for the manufacture of large area, high- resolution displays without the need for expensive, difficult to manufacture active matrix addressing schemes. Also, the bistability enables flicker-free operation. Currently, these displays are made using gtass substrates. However, some applications require rugged i.e., nonbreakable, flexible displays. The use ofa plastic substrate would fulfill these requirements. The transparent metal indium tin oxide ITO is currently used as the conducting electrode on glass as well as plastic substrates. While TO works well with glass, it does not adhere as well to plastic, is brittle, and has a tendency to break under constant bend conditions. In this paper, we investigate substituting the more robust conducting polymer for TO as the display electrode and determine the feasibility of producing a reflective Ch-LCD using plastic substrates with conducting polymer electrodes.