Dielectric and Electro-Optical Properties of Antiferroelectric Liquid Crystalline Materials

Antiferroelectric liquid crystals (AFLCs) are a recent class of materials in the family of liquid crystals which have high prospect of application in displays with better results as compared to conventional nematic displays. Beside technological applications, AFLCs are very interesting from the point of view of basic studies in soft condensed matter systems as these materials are showing various new sub-phases, viz. SmC alpha*, SmC beta*, SmC gamma* and many others with distinct macroscopic properties in a narrow temperature region in addition to the most common wide-range low-temperature SmCa* phase. In the present article, we report the structure of various sub-phases of AFLCs, their dielectric behaviour and the electro-optical response of some of the materials studied by our group.