Broad temperature range ferrielectric liquid crystal as a highly sensitive quadratic electro-optical material

Abstract

A chiral smectic liquid crystal in which a ferrielectric phase with a helix pitch p0 less than 125 nm exists over a temperature range of at least from −3°C to +36°C has been developed. Such a wide temperature range (including room temperatures) of the ferrielectric phase with a subwavelength helix pitch has been achieved for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, which creates opportunities for the practical use of ferrielectric liquid crystals. A quadratic electro-optical effect caused by deformations of the helix in an electric field is observed in the ferrielectric phase, and the Kerr coefficient, which reaches almost 200 nm/V2, is significantly higher than the same coefficient for the blue phase and for the smectic C* phase, which means a higher sensitivity of the developed ferrielectric liquid crystal to the electric field. The electro-optical response time does not exceed 300  μ s at room temperatures for this ferrielectric liquid crystal.