| 摘要 |
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To improve contrast by holding a liquid crystal layer containing a dichroic dye between substrates, on which electrodes are formed and adding a gelling agent to the liquid crystal layer. SOLUTION: This device consists of substrates 1, 2 on which first and second electrodes 3, 4 facing each other are formed, respectively, and a liquid crystal layer containing a dichroic dye 8 held between the substrates, and a gelling agent 11 is added to the liquid crystal layer. Preferably, the gelling agent 11 has characteristic groups expressed by the formula. In the formula, A is a divalent functional group. The proportion of the gelling agent 11 added is preferably <=1 mol%. Since the gelling agent 11 forms an intermolecular hydrogen bond to gel, it generates hydrogen bonds which are weak bonds with the liquid crystal molecules and therefore, its restraint on the liquid crystal 7 is low and does not inhibit the response of the liquid crystal 7 to the electric field though the viscosity of the liquid crystal increases. Moreover, by gelling, random alignment of the liquid crystal 7 and the dye 8 is suppressed to increase the apparent order parameter and the interaction between the liquid crystal 7 and the dye 8 and to make the contrast improved. |
