ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief summary of conventional phases such as N, SmA, and SmC phases. Most of bent-core liquid crystalline compounds tend to form smectic phases. The tendency of molecular bows to order is strongly coupled to the breaking of the translational symmetry, giving rise to the smectic order. Occurrence of highly electric-field-responsive uniaxial SmA phases is a striking feature of liquid crystals formed by bent-core liquid crystals (LCs). Apart from peaks in current transients reminiscent to the ferroelectric current response, those phases exhibit remarkable dielectric and nonlinear optical susceptibility. Soon after the discovery of polar switching in bend-core LCs in 1996, electro-optic measurements on bent dimers were started. One of the interesting aspects in bent dimers is the emergence of various phase structures depending on the combination of the lengths of both end chains and a linkage connecting different mesogenic groups.
