Fin de Siècle Competition, Nematic Active or Smectic Passive, and Resulting Unimaginable Antiferroelectricity and Ferrielectricity —LCs in My Memory—

Abstract

Both ILCC and my research and educational career began in 1965, but I started to study LCs when smectic ferroelectric LCs were discovered in 1975. The 8th ILCC 1980 Kyoto gave rise to a belief that ferroelctricity must play an important role in the next generation LC displays such as wall-mountable color LC TVs, a big dream at that time. Unfortunately things didn't quite work out that way; now the market is full of TFT nematic color LC TVs. Scientifically, however, I have successfully clarified several unexpected LC aspects, some of which are so intriguing and reverberating even now. This is a 45-year story how I studied a cross section of LCs with my young capable colleagues in the most exciting historical background, woven by ILCCs as the warp and by the synclinic ferroelectric and anticlinic antiferroelectric orderings as the woof.

Keywords:

• Antiferroelectricity
• ferrielectricity
• ferroelectricity
• ILCC
• ILCS
• long-range interlayer interactions