Super-Fast Optically Rewritable Liquid-Crystal Display Enabled by MoS2-Doped PI Bumpy Alignment Layer

A super-fast optically rewritable liquid crystal display (ORLCD) has been developed using a MoS2 nano-flakes doped polyimide (PI) hybrid thin layer in this paper. The MoS2 hybrid thin layer was prepared by directly doped MoS2 nano-flakes in PI solution, and is of high transparency over 85% in the visible range of 480 to 780 nm including a substrate. Liquid crystals (LCs) were antiparallelly aligned between rubbed MoS2 hybrid thin layer and optically oriented SD1 thin layer, and subsequently were realigned by polarized blue laser irritation in multi-domains. The realignment of LCs generates visible optical changes under polarized optical microscope (POM) and makes the written information readable. The rewriting time in which LCs are optically switched to achieve the highest contrast was also found remarkably reduced by MoS2 nano-flakes. In specific, by using a 1% MoS2 nano-flakes doped PI hybrid thin layer, the rewriting time has been reduced to 37.36s, which is about 46.41% decrease compared with pure PI cell. The accelerated rewriting time here is believed mainly caused by strengthened anchoring of LCs on bumpy hybrid thin layer due to MoS2 nano-flakes agglomeration, which super-fast actualizes the high optical contrast in domains. These findings will significantly contribute to a wide range of research and applications of ORLCD.