Ferroelectric Properties in Banana-Shaped Achiral Liquid Crystalline Molecular Systems

Abstract

We investigated the ferroelectric behavior in novel ferroelectric liquid crystals consisting of banana-shaped achiral molecules. Under the application of a triangular-wave electric field, we observed a single peak corresponding to the switching current in the higher-order smectic ( SmX 2 ) phase as well as the smectic A b ( SmA b ) phase, where ferroelectricity had been already reported. This result proves that the spontaneous polarization is switchable with a single hysteresis loop in SmX 2 as well as in SmA b . We also discussed the dielectric behavior in both the phases.