Colour and greyscale in ferroelectric liquid crystal displays

As portable equipment becomes more sophisticated it requires advanced electronic displays at least equivalent in image quality to that of CRTs, but with the advantages of low weight, power and volume. The performance of the current generation AMTN LCDs is at least equivalent to typical CRTs, but because of the processing difficulties associated with their manufacture, the production costs are very high, and their availability low. Despite the predicted improvements in yields and availability over the next three years, custom AMTN displays will nevertheless remain prohibitively expensive in low volumes. Moreover, AMTN technology has limitations for meeting future requirements in: a. High absolute resolution (1000 lpi) miniature helmet mounted displays; b. Large area (20" diagonal) wide angle of view, direct view displays. DRA\´s latest generation of LCDs based on ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) technology has demonstrated 1000 lpi resolution in a 6 mm square device. It has also developed drive schemes and materials capable of producing a 1280×1024 display with 4-bit greyscale