Models of molecular alignment structure in polymer-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystals

The electrooptical (EO) characteristics of polymer-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystals (PSFLCs), which are fabricated by UV photocure of doped monoacrylates with mesogenic side chains at a temperature where the LC medium is in the SmC* phase under the simultaneous application of a bipolar square-pulsed AC electric field, depend on the polymer density. The PSFLC with low concentration of polymer exhibits a bistable EO performance accompanied by microsized domain switching. On the other hand, the PSFLC with high concentration of polymer exhibits a monostable V-shaped EO performance without a threshold. We propose a model to explain the effect of polymer density on the molecular alignment structure of the PSFLC by investigating theoretically the free energy.