Patent ID: 7527747

Claim:
A liquid crystal device comprising: at least one confining substrate, a liquid crystal bulk layer, comprising a liquid crystalline material possessing a phase sequence consisting of an isotropic phase and a nematic phase and, optionally, one or more crystalline phase(s), and presenting a surface director at a bulk surface thereof, wherein a projected surface-director, which comprises an orthogonal projection of said surface-director on said substrate, presents a preferred in-plane orientation, which comprises a preferred orientation in a geometrical plane parallel to said substrate, and a surface-director alignment layer comprising a chiral smectic liquid crystalline material, which comprises at least one chiral smectic liquid crystalline polysiloxane, arranged to interact with the bulk layer at said bulk surface, said surface-director alignment layer being a dynamic alignment layer directly controllable by an applied electric field to perform an in-plane switching in the surface-director alignment layer for accomplishing, as a direct consequence of this in-plane switching and the interaction at the bulk surface, an in-plane switching of said preferred in-plane orientation of the projected surface-director.