Polymer-Stabilized SSFLCD Exhibiting Monostable Electrooptical Effect with High Contrast Ratio and Grayscale Capability

A new monostable surface stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal display (SSFLCD) device has been fabricated by using a newly developed polyimide alignment film and adopting polymer stabilization in terms of the UV photocure of the doped monoacrylates mixture with mesogenic side chain particularly at a temperature where the liquid crystal medium is in the SmC* phase under the simultaneous application of a monopolar electric field. The device fabricated by this method exhibits monostable electrooptical characteristics with high contrast ratio (230:1) owing to freedom from defects; grayscale capability without threshold, and fast response (40 mu s). We have suggested a model for explaining the monostability of the polymer-stabilized SSFLCD; and we obtain a fairly good agreement between experimental results and calculation using this model.