The LCDs built for projection systems are most often small reflective or transmissive panels set off by a bright arc lamp source. A line of lenses expands the reflected or transmitted image then sends it onto the screen. With front-projection systems the LCD is set on the same side of the screen as the viewer, however in rear-projection systems the screen is set off from behind. Projectors of greater expense and capability sometimes be found with three separated LCD panels, casting separate red, green, and blue images that mesh to make a coloured display on the screen.

The increasing desire for visual displays has placed a growth in emphasis on the switching speed of liquid crystals. This has led to the invention of objects build with smectic liquid crystals, some kinds of which possess a better electro-optical response than nematic liquid crystals. The surface-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal (SSFLC) display is in the current day the most progressive smectic device. In it the liquid crystal molecules are cast in layers that are perpendicular to the substrate planes, which are separated by one or two micrometres, and inside the layers the molecules are on a slant, as shown in the figure. The host liquid crystal holds optically active molecules, and a minor consequence of the optical activity and the slant of the molecules is the appearance of a permanent charge separation, or ferroelectric dipole, comparable to the ferromagnetic dipole of a magnet. The direction of this dipole is perpendicular to the tilt direction of the molecules and within the plane of the layers. Thus, there exists a permanent charge separation throughout the liquid crystal layer in the SSFLC, and its sign is directly paired to the tilt direction of the molecules. An applied voltage of the right sign can reverse the direction of this dipole in tens of microseconds and by doing so reverse the tilt direction of the molecules. The consequential change in optical properties can effect a change from light to dark in the case that one or more polarizers are employed.

SSFLC devices have been commercialized for large passive-matrix presentations, but their expense and complex detail has hindered them from creating any significant effect on the market. Small transmissive and reflective active-matrix SSFLC displays, however, show some promise for use as elements in projection systems or as viewfinders in digital cameras. Their quick reacting allows them to be employed in time-sequential colour systems, in which costly colour filters are taken out for a coloured backlight that flashes red, green, and blue in quick speed (approx 100 cycles per second). For example, the liquid crystal may be switched to a transmissive state for the red and green periods and then to a nontransmissive state in the blue period, displaying the upshot that the eye sees an average of red and green light, or the colour yellow.

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