Antiferroelectric order has been known to exist in liquid crystals since more than a decade and is now an intensely studied field of research. The great application potential of antiferroelectric liquid crystals has especially been demonstrated in sophisticated flat‐panel display prototypes, which nevertheless have not yet reached manufacturing, due to the severe intrinsic problem of folds in the smectic layers, which drastically limit the achievable contrast, and which seem impossible to circumvent. By proper molecular design, we have developed and tested a new generic class of antiferroelectric materials that present an elegant solution to this problem. Their optical properties make them unique not only among liquid crystals but among electro‐optical materials in general. The design of this generic class, which we call orthoconic, also gives an illustrative example of the physical meaning of the addition of tensorial properties. Normal surface‐stabilized antiferroelectrics are optically positive biaxial crystals, with an effective optic axis along the smectic layer normal. The surprising optical property of the corresponding orthoconic antiferroelectric can be formulated as a theorem: When the tilt directions in adjacent smectic layers are made perpendicular to each other, the material becomes negatively uniaxial with the optic axis lying perpendicular to the smectic layer normal. The electro‐optic effect in such a material is based on the fact that the optic axis can be switched between three mutually orthogonal directions, corresponding to zero, negative, or positive values of the applied electric field.

The optic, electro-optic, and dielectric properties of antiferroelectric liquid crystals ͑AFLCs͒ are analyzed and discussed in terms of the local tilt plane orientation. We show that the so-called pretransitional effect is a combination of two different electro-optic modes: the field-induced antiphase distortion of the antiferroelectric structure and the field-induced reorientation of the tilt plane. In the presence of a helix, the latter corresponds to a field-induced distortion of the helix. Both electro-optic modes are active only when the electric field has a component along the tilt plane. Thus, by assuring a horizontal surface-stabilized condition, where the helix is unwound by surface action and the tilt plane is everywhere parallel to the cell plates, the pretransitional effect should be suppressed. We also discuss the dielectrically active modes in AFLCs and under which circumstances they contribute to the measured dielectric permittivity.

So far, it has proven impossible to achieve an acceptable dark state between crossed polarizers for antiferroelectric liquid crystals (AFLCs), which otherwise would have an enormous potential for electro-optic applications, in particular for high-resolution full color displays. The reason lies in static and dynamic spatial fluctuations of the optic axis. As both have intrinsic causes it is not likely that the problem is ever going to be solved by improvement in alignment and addressing methods. We show that if the directors in alternating layers are orthogonal to each other, the AFLC acquires new optical properties such that the problem is eliminated, and a dark state extinction is achieved which is only limited by the quality of the polarizers. After having synthesized such a material, we have been able to demonstrate the predicted unique electro-optical properties of this new class of AFLC materials.

Antiferroelectric liquid crystals with a tilt angle of 45 degrees have very interesting optical properties, which seem to have been overlooked so far-perhaps because such materials have hardly been available. We have prepared a four-component mixture of partially fluorinated compounds with a SmC a * phase in the interval between 27.4°C and 121.6°C, in which the tilt angle θ saturates at 45 degrees for T ≤ 80°C, and we investigate the optical properties, theoretically and experimentally. One of the surprising features of 45 degree materials is that they permit a remarkably high contrast by virtue of an excellent dark-state, in spite of the fact that AFLC materials are notoriously difficult to align. This is because a 45° AFLC turns out to be (negatively) uniaxial instead of biaxial. We describe these properties and propose a number of potentially interesting new applications, including a polarizer-free display mode and a three-level "phase-only" modulator. Keywords uniaxial antiferroelectric liquid crystal; 45° tilt; Sm C a *; AFLC dielectric tensor; new electro-optic modes.

With the planned introduction of double patterning techniques, the focus of attention has been on tool overlay performance and whether or not this meets the required overlay for double patterning. However, as we require tighter and tighter overlay performance, the impact of the selected integration strategy plays a key part in determining the achievable overlay performance. Very little attention has been given at this time to the impact of for example deposition steps, oxidation steps, CMP steps and the impact that they have on wafer deformation and therefore degraded overlay performance, which directly reduces the available overlay budget. Also, selecting the optimum alignment strategy to follow, either direct or indirect alignment, plays an important part in achieving optimum overlay performance. In this paper we investigate the process impact of various double patterning integration strategies and attempt to show the importance of selecting the right strategy with respect to achieving a manufacturable double patterning process. Furthermore, we report a methodology to minimize process overlay by modelling the non-linear grids for process induced wafer deformation and demonstrate best achievable overlay by feeding this information back to the relevant process steps.