Ferroelectric Smectic Displays

In-plane switching method, (a) The schematics of the switching principle (b) A 46-inch TFT-IPS-LCD from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. 

Illustration of the Surface Stabilized Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Displays (SSFLCD). 

As the field is applied, the originally ideal sinusoidal polarization structure becomes distorted so that a larger part of the polarization will point parallel to the electric field. Whereas at zero electric field the sinusoidal variation results in an average optical axis parallel to the layer normal, the optical axis will be rotated when a field is applied. The rotation of the optical axis will be approximately proportional to the electric field and will change sign under 

Illustration of the Deformed HeKx Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Display (DHFLCD) mode. 

Today s ferroelectric liquid crystals are made on small sizes on silicon chips (liquid crystals on silicon) and presently are serving only a relatively small market. This is partially because of the problems with field-induced mechanical stresses related to their piezoelectricity. However, we believe that sooner or later the ferroelectric displays should be good enough to replace the nematic displays. They are inherently bistable, i.e., only those pixels should be readdressed that are showing change, and they offer switching with 1-100 microsecond ranges. Their main drawback is that they have two-dimensional 

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Once the helical structure of the Sc phase is unwound, ferroelectricity is displayed (see Chapter 6 for the details). In recent years, many experimental studies have revealed that some liquid crystal compounds show new types of smectic phases with complex tilt and dipole order, such as the anti-ferroelectric smectic C phase, Sca phase, and the ferrielectric smectic C phase, Sc7 phase. For instance, in the Sca phase, the spontaneous polarization Ps is opposite for successive layers. It was found experimentally that the chiral So phase is in fact similar to the anti-ferroelectric Sca phase. 

Perhaps one of the most important applications of chiral induction is in the area of liquid crystals. Upon addition of a wide range of appropriate chiral compounds, the achiral nematic, smectic C, and discotic phases are converted into the chiral cholesteric (or twisted nematic), the ferroelectric smectic C and the chiral discotic phases. As a first example, we take the induction of chirality in the columns of aromatic chromophores present in some liquid-crystalline polymers. " The polymers, achiral polyesters incorporating triphenylene moieties, display discotic mesophases, which upon doping with chiral electron acceptors based on tetranitro-9-fluorene, form chiral discotic phases in which the chirality is determined by the dopant. These conclusions were reached on the basis of CD spectra in which strong Cotton effects were observed. Interestingly, the chiral dopants were unable to dramatically influence the chiral winding of triphenylene polymers that already incorporated ste-reogenic centers. 

The concept of defects came about from crystallography. Defects are dismptions of ideal crystal lattice such as vacancies (point defects) or dislocations (linear defects). In numerous liquid crystalline phases, there is variety of defects and many of them are not observed in the solid crystals. A study of defects in liquid crystals is very important from both the academic and practical points of view [7,8]. Defects in liquid crystals are very useful for (i) identification of different phases by microscopic observation of the characteristic defects (ii) study of the elastic properties by observation of defect interactions (iii) understanding of the three-dimensional periodic structures (e.g., the blue phase in cholesterics) using a new concept of lattices of defects (iv) modelling of fundamental physical phenomena such as magnetic monopoles, interaction of quarks, etc. In the optical technology, defects usually play the detrimental role examples are defect walls in the twist nematic cells, shock instability in ferroelectric smectics, Grandjean disclinations in cholesteric cells used in dye microlasers, etc. However, more recently, defect structures find their applications in three-dimensional photonic crystals (e.g. blue phases), the bistable displays and smart memory cards. 

The ferroelectric smectic C liquid crystal display has not, at the time of writing, achieved extensive commercial use. It nevertheless stands as an important device, both because of its potential application in complex displays, which will not require an active matrix, and because of its intrinsic scientific interest. In addition, ferroelectric liquid crystal displays show faster switching rates (of the order of microseconds) than conventional nematic-based displays. 

Sub-milliseconds (and even sub-microseconds ) switching times so far are offered only by ferroelectric and antiferioelectric liquid crystals. Without aiming to review the majority of the possible display modes in ferroelectric smectic materials, i we just show the most known modes tested in SmC materials. 

In those days, there are some technical difficulties in realizing FLC displays. One was that it was difficult to keep LC layer thickness being very thin of around 2 pm in order to utilize its memory effect. The other was that because of stiffness of ferroelectric smectic layer structure, defects in the alignment of the LC orientation could easily be produced by mechanical shocks. 

As witli tlie nematic phase, a chiral version of tlie smectic C phase has been observed and is denoted SniC. In tliis phase, tlie director rotates around tlie cone generated by tlie tilt angle [9,32]. This phase is helielectric, i.e. tlie spontaneous polarization induced by dipolar ordering (transverse to tlie molecular long axis) rotates around a helix. However, if tlie helix is unwound by external forces such as surface interactions, or electric fields or by compensating tlie pitch in a mixture, so tliat it becomes infinite, tlie phase becomes ferroelectric. This is tlie basis of ferroelectric liquid crystal displays (section C2.2.4.4). If tliere is an alternation in polarization direction between layers tlie phase can be ferrielectric or antiferroelectric. A smectic A phase foniied by chiral molecules is sometimes denoted SiiiA, altliough, due to the untilted symmetry of tlie phase, it is not itself chiral. This notation is strictly incorrect because tlie asterisk should be used to indicate the chirality of tlie phase and not tliat of tlie constituent molecules. 

This volume of Topics in Stereochemistry could not be complete without hearing about ferroelectric liquid crystals, where chirality is the essential element behind the wide interest in this mesogenic state. In Chapter 8, Walba, a pioneering contributor to this area, provides a historical overview of the earlier key developments in this field and leads us to the discovery of the unique banana phases. This discussion is followed by a view of the most recent results, which involve, among others, the directed design of chiral ferroelectric banana phases, which display spontaneous polar symmetry breaking in a smectic liquid crystal. 

It can be safely predicted that applications of liquid crystals will expand in the future to more and more sophisticated areas of electronics. Potential applications of ferroelectric liquid crystals (e.g. fast shutters, complex multiplexed displays) are particularly exciting. The only LC that can show ferroelectric property is the chiral smectic C. Viable ferroelectric displays have however not yet materialized. Antifer-roelectric phases may also have good potential in display applications. Supertwisted nematic displays of twist artgles of around 240° and materials with low viscosity which respond relatively fast, have found considerable application. Another development is the polymer dispersed liquid crystal display in which small nematic droplets ( 2 gm in diameter) are formed in a polymer matrix. Liquid crystalline elastomers with novel physical properties would have many applications. 

Nematic materials are only one member of a large family of a variety of structurally different compounds forming liquid crystalline mesophases. Although only nematics have yet found really widespread use, mostly for display applications, some structurally highly diverse smectic phases also have unique electrooptical characteristics, for example ferroelectricity or antiferroelectricity, which can be modulated by selective fluorination [5, 51]. For 20 years intensive effort has been devoted to making practical use of these phenomena. 

Calamitic metallomesogens forming a chiral smectic C phase (SmC ) are ferroelectric materials. Due to the low symmetry of this phase when the helix is unwound (C2) the molecular dipoles are aUgned within the layers of the SmC phase, giving rise to ferroelectric order in the layers. Because the SmC phase has a helical structure, there is no net macroscopic dipole moment for the bulk phase. However, it is possible to unwind the helix by application of an external electric field or by surface anchoring in thin cells. Under such conditions, a well-aligned film of the ferroelectric liquid crystal can exhibit a net polarisation, called the spontaneous polarisation (Ps). Ferroelectric liquid crystals are of interest for display applications because the macroscopic polarisation can be switched very fast by an... 

Figure 6.38. The chiral smectic C phase (a and b) and the ferroelectric liquid crystal display (c and d).

The twist grain boundary smectic phase was discovered serendipitously at Bell Laboratories in 1987. Its discovery followed the back-tracking of a number of decisions made concerning the development of ferroelectric liquid crystals for display device applications. 

During the 1980s the development of ferroelectric liquid crystals continued at Bell Laboratories, and the above property-structure correlations suggested to us that, for the development of smectic C and smectic materials which would be suitable for use in applications of ferroelectric displays, it would not be wise to investigate 1-methylalkyl-substituted systems because of the... 

The subject of liquid crystals has now grown to become an exciting interdisciplinary field of research with important practical applications. This book presents a systematic and self-contained treatment of the physics of the different types of thermotropic liquid crystals - the three classical types, nematic, cholesteric and smectic, composed of rod-shaped molecules, and the newly discovered discotic type composed of disc-shaped molecules. The coverage includes a description of the structures of these four main types and their polymorphic modifications, their thermodynamical, optical and mechanical properties and their behaviour under external fields. The basic principles underlying the major applications of liquid crystals in display technology (for example, the twisted and supertwisted nematic devices, the surface stabilized ferroelectric device, etc.) and in thermography are also discussed. 

Ferroelectric Liquid Ciystal Displays. Chiral tilted smectic liquid crystals, also known as ferroelectric liquid crystals, exhibit macroscopic dipole density, i.e. 

The switching of the director in the surface stabilised ferroelectric liquid crystal cells (SSFLC) [8] has briefly been discussed in Section 13.1.2. Due to its importance for ferroelectric liquid crystal displays we shall discuss this effect in more detail. The geometry of a planar cell of thickness d is shown in Fig. 13.1.2. Now, the helical structure is considered to be unwound. We are interested in the field and time behaviour of the director or c-director given by angle cp(r), and this process is considered to be independent of z and y- coordinates. The smectic C equilibrium tilt angle 9 is assumed constant. 

One of the disadvantages of the LCD display is that the response time is slow (approximately 50 (jls) and the liquid-crystal phase is too symmetric to allow vector order. To overcome this problem, tilted smectic phases with ferroelectric properties (polarisation can be reversed by an electric field) can be used, providing that the liquid crystal is chiral. One such ferroelectric liquid crystal is... 

A smectic C with a chiral agent can also exhibit a helical twist, but of just the out-of-plane component of the molecular alignment direction. This phase, called smectic C, is ferroelectric and has been used to make fast-switching display panels. 

Beresnev, L., Chigrinov, V. G., Dergachev, D. I., Poshidaev, E. P., Funfschilling, J., and Schadt, M., Deformed helix ferroelectric liquid crystal display a new electrooptic mode in ferroelectric chiral. smectic C liquid crystals, Liq. Cry.st., 5, 1171-1177 (1989). 

The form chirahty of all of these chiral smectic mesophases takes the form of a helical stracture, but the helix manifests itself in a different way from the helix in the chiral nematic phase. In addition to being substantially the most commonly exhibited of the tilted chiral smectic phases, the chiral smectic C phase is by far the most important (least ordered and least viscous) in this category. The chiral smectic C phase is employed in the ferroelectric display device (see Chapter 13) but the helix must be unwound. 

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