Highly promising electrooptic material: Distorted helix ferroelectric liquid crystal with a specific tilt angle

Short pitch deformable helix ferroelectric liquid crystals are shown to become optically isotropic at certain critical tilt angle with an average dielectric constant (ε ₁+ε ₂+ε ₃)/ 3. For uniaxial medium, this angle equals θ _d = cos ^-1(1/√3), and it depends weakly on the local biaxial anisotropy. The degeneracy is removed upon the application of a small electric field and the medium becomes optically biaxial. A high contrast fast electrooptic modulation and display devices can be built using such materials even when aligned in a multi-domain. For tilt angles very near the degeneracy angle, ultrasensitivity of the eigenaxes rotation to the applied field is found.