Nanowire grid polarizer for energy efficient and wide-view liquid crystal displays

We report a liquid crystal display (LCD) using a nanowire grid polarizer (NWGP) to replace the bottom sheet linear polarizer (LP). The top LP and bottom NWGP configurations enable backlight recycling for enhancing optical efficiency while keeping a high contrast ratio and wide viewing angle. The electro-optic performance of this device configuration is studied based on the effective-medium theory and 4 x 4 matrix method. Results show that this configuration exhibits a 100: 1 contrast ratio over 75 S viewing cone in a film-compensated multidomain vertical alignment LCD and 10: 1 over 65 S viewing cone in a fringe-field switching LCD without any compensation film. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.