Inkjet‐Printed Nematic Liquid Crystal Droplet Arrays for Flexible Display Frontplanes

ABSTRACT Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) have long been a cornerstone of modern display technology, yet nematic LCDs have struggled to enter the flexible display market. This is because bending induces flow in the liquid crystal of the displays, which, in turn, distorts and disrupts the image. Previous attempts to fix this have tried introducing polymer structures or polymer stabilization, but this often increases manufacturing complexity or impairs performance. As an alternative method to prevent this flow, we demonstrate a proof‐of‐concept design using an array of discrete printed liquid crystal droplets, rather than a conventionally filled cell, to enable the fabrication of highly flexible LCD frontplanes. Despite the departure from standard filled designs, we observe no significant performance drawbacks for the characterization metrics we measured using our printed droplet method. The printed droplet arrays operate at comparable voltages and exhibit similar response times to their filled cell counterparts. Overall, these results suggest that using printed droplets effectively eliminates flow‐induced display distortion without many of the drawbacks associated with previously reported solutions.