Electro-Optic Effects in Thermotropic Liquid Crystals

Since the discovery of the first liquid crystal in 1888 by the Austrian biologist Friedrich Reinitzer with the considerable assistance of the German physicist Otto Lehman, who in that time had been universally recognised authority in the field of microscope technique, thousands and thousands of liquid crystals have been synthesised among them nematics, short-pitch cholesterics and various kinds of smectics such as smectic-A and smectic-C. The smectic-A or smectic-C phases grow from a nematic or unwinded large-pitch cholesteric oriented in the middle part of the cells and from strongly-deformed nematic or unwinded large-pitch cholesteric layer in the boundary regions of the liquid crystal cells.