Response to an applied electric field in an antiferroelectric 1/2 subphase: The role of thermal fluctuations

Koichiro Shirota, Atsuo Fukuda, Neelam Yadav, Vitaly P. Panov, Jagdish K. Vij, Yutaka Yamagata, and Ken Ishikawa
Phys. Rev. E 107, 064701 – Published 1 June 2023

Abstract

The response to an applied electric field in the qT=1/2 subphase of the MC881-MC452 binary mixture system is studied by using thick homeotropically aligned cells. In the ordinary antiferroelectric SmCA* and 1/2 (sub)phases, some nonplanar asymmetric distortions in the antiferroelectric unit cell structure produce induced polarization in the applied field direction, starts to unwind the helix from the beginning, and tends to align the averaged tilt plane direction parallel to the applied field. In the 1/2 subphase under consideration, however, the helix resists being deformed at the beginning and then the thresholdlike steep increase of birefringence Δn occurs in the transition from 1/2 to unwound SmC* at a field of less than 0.5 V/µm; we conclude that the thermal fluctuations play an important role in promoting the director flip-flopping in a single layer under the applied field and bring about additional induced polarization, which counteracts the aforementioned ordinary induced one and prevents the helix from unwinding. This suggests that the Langevin-like director reorientation is the mechanism of the V-shaped switching which was actually observed in the thin films of Mitsui mixture [Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 015701 (2001)] and must have been used in prototyped thresholdless antiferroelectric liquid-crystal displays.

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  • Received 3 September 2022
  • Revised 30 March 2023
  • Accepted 27 April 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.107.064701

©2023 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Polymers & Soft Matter

Authors & Affiliations

Koichiro Shirota1,*, Atsuo Fukuda2,†, Neelam Yadav2, Vitaly P. Panov3,2, Jagdish K. Vij2, Yutaka Yamagata1, and Ken Ishikawa4,‡

  • 1RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics (RAP), 2-1, Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
  • 2Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
  • 3Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Gyeonggi-do 16419, Republic of Korea
  • 4Department of Materials Science and Engineering, School of Materials and Chemical Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 S8-28, Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan

  • *shirota@riken.jp
  • fukudaa@tcd.ie
  • ishikawa.k.ab@m.titech.ac.jp

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Issue

Vol. 107, Iss. 6 — June 2023

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