Effect of magnitude of dielectric anisotropy of a liquid crystal on light efficiency in the fringe-field switching nematic liquid crystal cell

The light efficiency of most well-known nematic liquid crystal (LC) modes, such as twisted nematic and in-plane switching, depends only on the cell retardation value, irrespective of the cell gap and dielectric anisotropy of the LC. Interestingly, the light efficiency of a homogenously aligned nematic LC cell driven by a fringe electric field, termed the fringe-field switching (FFS) mode, is found to be dependent on the magnitude of dielectric anisotropy, such that an LC with high dielectric anisotropy results in lower light efficiency than that of an LC with low dielectric anisotropy.