The effect of the biaxial permittivity tensor and tilted layer geometries on the switching of ferroelectric liquid crystals

Abstract

Using a simple uniform switching model, we investigate the behaviour of the voltage dependent switching time of surface stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystals as a function of the biaxial permittivity tensor and the layer tilt angle. We show that the dielectric biaxiality can markedly effect the response time (τ) of the device and is the origin of the minimum in τ as a function of voltage (V) in tilted layer systems. The dielectric biaxiality should, therefore, be optimized for multiplexing schemes which use the τ—V minimum.