Dynamical behavior of a bistable chiral quasihomeotropic liquid crystal cell

Abstract

The dynamical behavior of the directors in a bistable chiral quasihomeotropic (BCQH) liquid crystal cell has been investigated. This cell can be switched from the initial quasihomeotropic configuration state at zero field to two static twisted states at 14 V by different switching processes. We studied the dynamic behavior of the BCQH cell based on the general nematohydrodynamic theory, and the detailed dynamical mechanism was illustrated by analyzing the director and velocity profiles obtained from the numerical simulation. We found that, in addition to the flow effect, the asymmetric polar-alignment condition is another important factor to achieve the switching bistability of our BCQH cell. The experimental and numerical results are reported in this letter. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.