Optical disc memory system utilizing a smectic chiral liquid crystal

Claim 1

An information recording and reading system comprising: an optical disc memory including (a) a pair of substrates provided in parallel with an interval in between, at least one of which is transparent and (b) a chiral smectic liquid crystal layer disposed between said substrates in which liquid crystal molecules are arranged in parallel to the substrates with their dipole moments perpendicular to said substrates, wherein a number of domains are defined in said liquid crystal layer of the optical disc memory; means for applying to said liquid crystal layer a strong electric field, the strength of the strong electric field being such as to direct the dipole moments of the liquid crystal molecules uniformly in one direction perpendicular to said substrates, said one direction of the dipole moments remaining after removal of the strong electric field; means for subjecting, subsequent to the removal of the strong electric field, at least said particular domains to a weak electric field opposite in direction to said strong electric field, the strength of said weak electric field being such as not to change the directions of the electric dipole moments established by the strong electric field in the absence of said irradiating of the particular domains, the directions of the dipole moments at the particular domains being changed in response to the particular domains being irradiated and the weak electric field being applied thereto to thus write and store information in the optical disc memory; and means for reading information stored in said optical disc memory including (a) means for applying light to a polarizing element spaced from the optical disc memory and out of the path of the light utilized by the irradiating means to thus apply polarized light to the optical disc memory and (b) means sensing light which passes through predetermined domains in the liquid crystal layer corresponding to the polarized light to thus read the information stored in the optical disc.