THE FIELD-INDUCED STRIPE TEXTURE IN SURFACE STABILIZED FERROELECTRIC LIQUID-CRYSTAL CELLS

We investigate the texture which appears as parallel stripes perpendicular to the smectic layers in SSFLC cells. When the temperature approaches the smectic A to smectic C* transition from above in the smectic A phase, a DC field induces the chevron structure due to the electroclinic effect and then the stripe texture is formed. We have identified the stripes to be parallel zig-zag walls. We show that a reasonably high DC voltage changes the structure of the cell from chevron to book-shelf in the smectic C* phase and we show how this happens. We have experimentally found that the width of the stripes is approximately equal to the thickness of the cell and we present a theoretical explanation of the equivalence. We have measured the layer tilt angles in the plane of the cell as a function of temperature and have found them to be the same as the chevron tilt angles determined by X-ray scattering. The result confirms the chevron layer structure and stripe texture models and also gives a simple way to measure chevron layer tilt angles. © 1991, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.