Patent ID: 7218303

Claim:
A method of aligning ferroelectric liquid crystal material in the presence of an applied electric field, comprising: providing a liquid crystal display (LCD) panel having a plurality of gate lines, a plurality of data lines, and a plurality of ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) cells; providing FLC material within the FLC cells; applying an electric field to the FLC cells to impart an initial alignment to the provided FLC material; providing a data drive circuit for driving the plurality of data lines; providing a gate drive circuit for driving the plurality of gate lines; providing a source printed circuit board (PCB) connected to the LCD panel through the data drive circuit, wherein the source PCB includes a common voltage terminal and a ground voltage terminal; providing a gate PCB connected to the LCD panel through the gate drive circuit, wherein the gate PCB includes a common voltage terminal and a ground voltage terminal; and aligning the initially aligned FLC material in all of the FLC cells simultaneously, the aligning comprising: applying a first voltage to the common voltage terminal on the source PCB; applying a second voltage to the ground voltage terminal on the source PCB simultaneously with the first voltage to the common voltage terminal on the source PCB; applying the first voltage to the common voltage terminal formed on the gate PCB; and applying the second voltage to the ground terminal formed on the gate PCB simultaneously with the first voltage to the common voltage terminal formed on the gate PCB.