Liquid crystal device having two bistable orientation states in the chiral smectic temperature range

摘要

A liquid crystal device includes a pair of substrates with a orientation controlling film being provided on at least one of the substrates through a base layer, and a ferroelectric smectic liquid crystal which is disposed between the substrates. The orientation controlling film has a uniaxial orientation processing axis. The ferroelectric smectic liquid crystal generates two different stable orientation states at high and low temperatures regions within the temperature range achieving the ferroelectric smectic phase. The ferroelectric smectic liquid crystal is in one of the two stable orientation states which is generated at the low temperature region when the liquid crystal in the other stable orientation state generated at the high temperature region cools. Where d is the thickness of the orientation controlling film and S is the average surface roughness of the base layer, d and S have the relation expressed by 0