Achromatic wide-view circular polarizers for a high-transmittance vertically-aligned liquid crystal cell

We propose an optical compensation scheme through which we can eliminate the off-axis light leakage in a vertically-aligned liquid crystal cell with circular polarizers. In this scheme, four uniaxial films with complementary dispersion characteristics are used to compensate one another, resulting in achromatic effective phase retardation for off-axis angles. By using the proposed optical compensation, a contrast ratio higher than 2000:1 can be realized over the entire 55° viewing cone in a multi-domain vertical-alignment liquid crystal cell with circular polarizers.