Reference No.: JAM/NJM1
Supervisors:
Date Advertised: 6th February 2007
Please contact Dr John Mackenzie for further information.
Liquid crystal displays play an increasingly important role in today's world.
There is now a need for power efficient, high-definition small screens for hand-held devices such as mobile phones, personal organisers and internet access units and for large screen, space saving computer VDUs and televisions.
The main issues of importance to LCD manufacturers are, the ability to produce high speed switching to allow video images to be displayed, increased optical performance i.e better contrast and viewing angle, and power consumption, to extend the life-time of batteries in portable devices.
With this in mind, research is being undertaken in the Maths Department to understand fast switching processes and how defects affect switching.
One problem is that switching often occurs by domain growth and no one knows why the domains are "boat-shaped", how we can affect the shape of the domains, what governs the speed of growth of the domains and how zig-zag defects affect domain growth.
This project aims to model this system as a set of differential equations in order to answer these questions. The theory of liquid crystals that has been developed in the Maths Department will be used as well as state-of-the-art numerical techniques developed by the Numerical Analysis group.
This work involves numerically solving nonlinear ordinary and partial differential equations governing the fluid flow, molecular orientation together with Maxwell's equations governing the electric field throughout the LCD and the behaviour of light through the display.
This PhD project will provide a postgraduate student with extensive training in model building, problem solving, fluid dynamics and a number of numerical techniques.