A novel property caused by frustration between ferroelectricity and antiferroelectricity and its application to liquid crystal displays - frustoelectricity and V-shaped switching

We have studied the frustration between ferro- and antiferro-electricity in chiral smectic C like liquid crystalline phases, which is not only fundame ntally interesting but also very attractive from an application point of vi ew. It causes temperature induced successive phase transitions as character ized by a devil's staircase and the thresholdless, hysteresis-free, V-shape d switching induced by an applied electric field. The devil's staircase ind icates some type of interlayer ordering, while the V-shaped switching sugge sts considerably diminished tilting correlation. These two are apparently c ontradictory to each other, but result from the same cause, i.e. the frustr ation. We have first summarized experimental facts regarding subphases and successive phase transitions observed in many compounds and mixtures, which we believe are related to one another and result from the frustration. We have introduced several different theoretical explanations for these observ ed facts, and shown that only the axial next nearest neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model can explain almost all of the facts, provided that it is unified wit h the XY model appropriately. The unified model can make a comprehensive ex planation in the most natural way based on the most probable molecular inte ractions. We have then emphasised that there are several modes regarding th e V-shaped switching, because the system becomes so soft with respect to th e tilting direction and sense that any additional external or internal forc e modifies the in-plane local director alignments. For the practically usab le ones, we have emphasised the need for some type of randomization in the molecular alignment at the tip of the V and/or the switching process. In pa rticular, the two dimensional (ideally, cylindrically symmetric) azimuthal angle distribution of local in-plane directors around the smectic layer nor mal is most attractive. Such a randomized state at the tip of the V is ther modynamically unique under a given condition imposed by interfaces. It stay s stable even when the smectic layer structure, such as a chevron, changes with temperature. Finally, we have summarized the so-far reported compounds and mixtures for the V-shaped switching and introduced some prototypes of LCDs using them.