Self-Recovery from Alignment Damage under AC Fields in Antiferroelectric and Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Cells

Alignment recovery from damage has been confirmed to occur under an AC electric field, e.g. , 30 V pp ·µm -1 , in antiferroelectric chiral smectic liquid crystal cells of MHPOBC and a related fluorinated compound. The recovery partly results from internal shearing produced by reversible layer switching between bookshelf and quasi-bookshelf. Contrary to the widely accepted notion, even in a ferroelectric liquid crystal cell of a compound similar to MHPOBC, reversible layer deformation due to an electric field has been observed from X-ray diffraction and a similar alignment recovery from damage has also been confirmed to occur.