For an emissive type of a liquid crystal (LC) display, a guest-host mode in which fluorescent dichroic dyes are dissolved in LCs have been proposed. In this paper, white fluorescent display properties in LC cells with two dichroic dyes emitting complimentary colors or three three dichroic dyes emitting trichromatic colors are reported. Blue fluorescent dye of 2,5-Bis(5-tert-butyl-2-benzoxazolyl)-thiophene (BBOT), cyan fluorescent dye of 4,7-bis(-4-ethoxycarbonylphenyl)-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (ECP-BTD), yellow fluorescent dye of 4,7-bis(4-(4'-butylphenylethenyl)phenyl)-2,1,3- benzothiadiazole (BPEP-BTD), and red fluorescent dyes NKX-2197 (Hayashibara Biochemical Lab) and 4,7-di(2-(5-(p-alkoxylphenyl)thienyl))-2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (BAPT-BTD) were prepared. A UV fluorescent lamp (?max=360nm, FWHM=40nm) was used as an excitation light source. Dyes were dissolved in a nematic LC ZLI-1083 of phenyl-cyclohexane compounds which was almost transparent in the wavelength range of the excitation UV light. Dichroic ratios of those dyes are about 5 to 9. When BBTO of 0.2wt% and BPEP-BTD of 0.1wt% were dissolved in the LC, we obtained the white fluorescence. The CIE (1931) chromaticity coordinates (x, y) was (0.26, 0.32). The white fluorescence was also obtained in the LC cell with ECP-BTD of 0.25wt% and NKX-2197 of 0.06wt%. For the mixture of three fluorescent dichroic dyes, BBOT of 0.3wt%, C6 of 0.1wt% and BAPT-BTD of 0.1 wt%, we assembled twisted nematic cell and measured fluorescent spectra under the voltage application, as shown in Fig. 1. The cell was excited with unpolarized UV light and the fluorescent spectrum of which polarization direction was parallel to the LC direction on the exit side of the substrate. The cell thickness was 10 micron. The white fluorescent intensity decreased with the voltage application and the contrast ratio in the voltage on and off states was about 7.6. The fluorescent color became slightly bluish under the high voltage application and the chromaticity coordinates changed from (0.33, 0.33) to (0.28, 0.29), since the dichoic ratio of the blue fluorescent dye was lower than that of the yellow and red fluorescent dyes. We also prepared the homeotropic fluorescent LC cell using these guest dyes and n-type host LC. White fluorescent intensity increased with the voltage application and the contrast ratio was about 11.3. We also tried to improve the fluorescent intensity by using the cholesteric scattering state. In the scattering state, the optical pass of the excitation UV light in the LC cell becomes longer. Therefore the fluorescent intensity increased about 1.5 times. In addition, the back scattered light of the ambient white light added to the white emission light and the visibility in the outdoor or the bright room increased.
