Stabilization of high-brightness relaxed bend state and investigation of fast-switching symmetric H state in a pi-cell by synchronized illumination technique

The non-permanent states in a pi-cell have interesting electro-optical performances: the symmetric H (Hs) state has sub-millisecond response times and the non-biased bend (we term it as "relaxed bend," RB) state before collapsing into the twist state has high brightness. However, the short lifetime of these states makes them difficult to be studied and utilized. We propose a synchronized illumination technique to investigate the Hs state and stabilize the RB state. After stabilizing, the brightness of the ON-state is increased by a factor of 1.18 compared with the normal pi-cell; moreover, the intensity dynamic range of the RB state stabilized pi-cell is larger than that of the conventionally polymer-stabilized pi-cell.