Patent ID: 8810753

Claim:
A liquid crystal device comprising: a liquid crystal layer; a first substrate and a second substrate between which the liquid crystal layer is sandwiched; a reflective layer operable to reflect light which is incident thereon from the second substrate side through the liquid crystal layer; a plurality of optical layers disposed on the side opposite to the first substrate with reference to the second substrate, wherein an uppermost one of the plurality of optical layers is a polarizing layer and one or more of the plurality of optical layers are phase difference layers; one or more light-scattering layers which are each disposed in at least one of a region between the second substrate and the plurality of optical layers and a region between two mutually proximate ones of the plurality of optical layers and which each show relatively larger forward scattering and relatively smaller back scattering, wherein the uppermost one of the plurality of optical layers converts natural light being externally incident thereon into linearly polarized light, one or more of the phase difference layers convert the linearly polarized light incident thereon from the polarizing layer side into circularly polarized light such that light back-scattered by the one or more light-scattering layers is converted into circularly polarized light that is in a direction opposite to light forward-scattered by the one or more light-scattering layers and received at a reflective electrode, at least some regions of the liquid crystal layer convert circularly polarized light into linearly polarized light, and at least other regions of the liquid crystal layer pass circularly polarized light such that the reflective electrode receives linearly polarized light and circularly polarized light.