Thresholdless Switching in Ferro- and Antiferro-electric Liquid Crystal Displays

Acknowledgements First, I would like to express my gratitude to my promoter prof. K. Neyts, for giving me the privilege to conduct this PhD work under his supervision. Throughout this research, he provided me with continuous scientific help, valuable advice and lots of new ideas, which inspired and motivated my work. His great talent to explain things clearly and simply helped me to understand complex scientific problems in an easy way. Secondly, I would like to thank my co-promoter em.prof. H. Pauwels, for giving me a comprehensive theoretical background, for fruitful discussions, which fed this work with good ideas and for the overall assistance in spite of his retirement. I appreciate the support of both promoters very much. Thank you for a productive collaboration, constant assist in many problems and for good company at all times. It was a pleasure for me to work with you. The express of thanks goes also to the rest of the academic staff: prof. A. De Vos, prof. M. Burgel-man, prof. P. De Visschere and prof. G. De Mey for their willingness to help and for valuable discussions during the seminars. I'm particularly grateful to prof. P. Rudquist for giving me the opportunity to work in Chalmers University of Technology. I thank him for interesting and stimulating discussions, which deeply broadened my understanding of the matter, and significantly contributed to the experimental part of this research. I also wish to thank dr. K. D'havé. His scientific support, practical advice and helpful hand with the cleanroom technology was invaluable for this work. Also thanks to dr. F. Goc and to other members of my group for helping me with writing and reviewing this manuscript. There are many other people, who contributed to this work in a variety of ways; too many to thank individually. I thank all of them. Finally, I would like to say 'thank you' to my friends and family, for standing by me in good and bad times. Particularly to my parents, for their continuous support in every aspect of my life, and most importantly of all, to my wife for endless patience and encouragement when it was most required.