P-163: Mono-Domain Alignment of the SmC Liquid Crystalline Phase for Analog Display Applications

We propose a novel liquid‐crystal alignment method that provides uniform orientation of otherwise difficult‐to‐align smectic materials lacking a nematic phase. The smectic‐A phase is grown in the presence of a 10–20 K/mm temperature gradient from an air bubble located within a cell by a photolithographically defined channel in the cell substrates. We obtain uniform layer alignment in millimeter‐wide smectic regions at growth rates below about 0.05 μm/s even though there is a tendency for growth instability. As many smectic materials that have attractive features for analog display applications, the proposed alignment method can play an important role in designing and development of analog display devices.