Development of Novel Polyimide Alignment Films for Liquid Crystal Display Televisions

Abstract

We developed novel organic-solvent-soluble polyimide (PI) alignment films with a steroidal structure for liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions (TVs). The PIs can generate any desired pretilt angles between 3 - 90 °, which are needed to realize LCD-TVs such as twisted nematic, optically compensated bend, and vertical alignment LCD modes. The PIs also showed very stable pretilt angles, together with good electrical properties. The developed PI alignment films have been widely used for large screen size LCD-TVs with the display performance such as high contrast, fast response time, and wide viewing angle.