Mechanical vibrations of smectic cells under fast field reversal

It is known that ferroelectric liquid crystal cells vibrate mechanically under the effect of ac fields. The vibrations are mainly due to the backflow and electroclinic effects. For small director oscillations the effect is mainly linear and goes with the frequency of the field. For larger oscillations higher harmonics appear too. We studied the practically interesting case when, due to rectangular excitation, the director switches fully between two stable positions. In the experiments bookshelf textures of (R)-MHPOBC and FLC6430 (from Hoffmann La Roche) were used. The accelerations of the cover plates due to the reversal of the field were detected in three orthogonal directions. The switches cause strong vibrations of the plates (lasting less than a millisecond,. acceleration similar to 10m/s(2)). The vibration is largest at the SmCalpha*-SmA phase transition indicating that the dominating effect is electroclinic in origin.