Reversible greyscale memory effect of a bent-core liquid crystal

Memory effect of a bent-core liquid crystal (LC) in smectic A phase was studied. The bent-core LC formed spatially distributed domains with different threshold fields, and the domains showed a bistable switching from a planar to a homeotropic state under an electric field across the cell. The fraction of homeotropic domains was gradually increased with stronger electric field, thus an analogue greyscale memory effect was obtained by the relative fraction between the planar and homeotropic domains. The bent-core molecules could be reversibly switched back to the initial planar state by applying an in-plane electric field.