A multistable smectic‐A liquid‐crystal device with low threshold field

Abstract— A multistable liquid‐crystal device has been realized in this study; its smectic‐A LC is oriented by in‐plane and out‐of‐plane electric fields with various amplitudes. This paper introduces improvements made to electrode structure and hybrid surface treatments that have enhanced SmA LC device performance. The driving voltage of the hybrid‐aligned cell has been reduced to 20% of the vertical‐aligned one, and light leakage has been suppressed by out‐of‐plane electric‐field‐strength modulation. The many advantages of this multi‐stabilized LC device could be applied to memory devices and to flexible displays.