Polarizing grating color filters with large acceptance angle and high transmittance.

We design and simulate a polarizing color filter with a sub-wavelength metal-dielectric grating. It manifests several advantages: a large acceptance angle (up to ±50°), high transmittance (74.3%-92.7%), low absorption loss (∼3.3%), and a high extinction ratio. This polarizing color filter can be integrated into a liquid-crystal display (LCD) backlight system to simultaneously recycle the light according to its color and polarization. In combination with a specially designed directional backlight, this newly proposed LCD system can theoretically improve optical efficiency up to ∼2.5×, and also provides a large ambient contrast ratio and a wide view. Our approach enables an ultra-low-power LCD without using the complicated field-sequential-color technique.