A polymerizable composition excellent in solubility and having high storage stability with no crystal precipitation or the like; a polymerizable composition capable of being formed into a polymer excellent in alignment performance and leveling performance, hardly having defects, cissing and unevenness and hardly causing appearance failure owing to surfactant offset; and a polymer, an optically anisotropic body, a display element, a light-emitting element and the like using the polymerizable composition are provided. Specifically, the invention provides a polymerizable composition containing a) one or two or more polymerizable compounds each having one polymerizable group or two or more polymerizable groups and satisfying a formula (I) Re(450 nm)/Re(550 nm)<1.0 (I), and b) one or two or more compounds represented by the general formula (B). In addition, the invention provides a polymer, an optically anisotropic body, a display element, a light-emitting element and the like using the polymerizable composition.

The liquid crystal display element includes: two transparent substrates; a liquid crystal composition sandwiched between the two transparent substrates and containing one or two or more liquid crystal compounds; and a polymer or copolymer that is included in the liquid crystal composition, the polymer or copolymer being a cured product of a polymerizable composition that contains one or two or more polymerizable compounds and a photopolymerization initiator having a maximum absorption wavelength peak at 310 nm to 380 nm. The content of the polymerizable composition is 1% by mass or more and less than 40% by mass based on the total weight of the polymerizable composition and the liquid crystal composition.

The invention relates to a method of preparing a polymer film and to the use of such polymer film as in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) or other optical or electrooptical devices, for decorative or security applications, as alignment layer or optical retardation film.

Provided are an image recorded material including a substrate and an image recorded on the substrate, in which the image includes a cholesteric liquid crystal layer, the cholesteric liquid crystal layer has a stripe pattern of a bright portion and a dark portion, observed by a scanning electron microscope, in a cross section along a thickness direction of the image, in a case where an angle between a continuous line which is the bright portion or the dark portion and a main surface of the substrate is defined as an alignment angle, at least two regions in which an absolute value of a difference of the alignment angles is 5? or more are provided, and both of the two regions have a length of width of 1 mm or more in an in-plane direction of the substrate; and applications thereof.

An object of the invention is to provide an anisotropic light absorption film having both a high alignment degree and high light resistance, and a laminate provided using the anisotropic light absorption film. An anisotropic light absorption film according to the embodiment of the invention is formed from a composition having a first dichroic azo dye, a second dichroic azo dye, and a compound represented by Formula (I) or a polymer thereof, the first dichroic azo dye has a solution absorption maximum wavelength of 400 nm or greater and less than 550 nm, the second dichroic azo dye has a solution absorption maximum wavelength of 550 nm or greater and 750 nm or less, and the film has an arrangement structure of the first dichroic azo dye or an arrangement structure of the second dichroic azo dye therein.

The present invention relates to a polymer composition which contains (A) a photosensitive side-chain polymer that exhibits liquid crystallinity in a predetermined temperature range and has a repeating unit comprising a vertically aligning group, and (B) an organic solvent. The present invention provides: a liquid crystal alignment film which has excellent tilt angle characteristics, while being provided with alignment controllability with high efficiency; a polymer composition which enables the achievement of this liquid crystal alignment film; a twisted nematic liquid crystal display element; and a vertical field switching mode liquid crystal display element.

A liquid crystal composition comprises a photo-polymerizable liquid crystal mixture and a heat-polymerizable liquid crystal mixture, and the two mixtures have opposite rotatory directions. A patterned phase delay film is prepared from the liquid crystal composition. A display device comprises the phase delay film. The preparation of the patterned phase-delay film can be implemented by a two-step polymerization process including UV-polymerization and heat-polymerization. The process is simple and the costs are low.

The invention relates to reactive mesogens (RMs) comprising a terphenyl group, to mixtures and formulations comprising them, to polymers obtained form such RMs and RM mixtures, and the use of the RMs, RM mixtures and polymers in optical or electrooptical components or devices, like optical retardation films for liquid crystal displays (LCDs).

The invention provides a liquid crystal medium mixture including a liquid crystal material, an antioxidant and at least one kind of polymerizable monomer capable of undergoing polymerization reaction under ultraviolet light irradiation. Under an ultraviolet light irradiation, the antioxidant would make the polymerizable monomer be slowly polymerized to form a homogeneous polymer network in the liquid crystal material and thereby make the liquid crystal material have a fast-response speed when a voltage is applied thereto. The invention further provides a liquid crystal display panel.

A first object of the present invention is to provide a liquid crystalline composition capable of forming a film having excellent light resistance and also having excellent alignment properties of a liquid crystal compound in the film. In addition, a second object of the present invention is to provide a cured product obtained from the liquid crystalline composition, an optically anisotropic layer, an optical element, and a light guide element.

The liquid crystalline composition of the present invention is a liquid crystalline composition containing a compound A and an antioxidant, in which the compound A is a compound having a partial structure represented by Formula (I), in a case where the compound A exhibits liquid crystallinity and the composition does not contain a liquid crystal compound B having a structure different from a structure of the compound A, a distance HSP between a HSP value of the antioxidant and a HSP value of the compound A is 10.5 MPa.sup.0.5 or less, and in a case where the composition contains the liquid crystal compound B, a distance HSP between the HSP value of the antioxidant, and an average HSP value of the HSP value of the compound A and a HSP value of the liquid crystal compound B is 10.5 MPa.sup.0.5 or less.

##STR00001##

In Formula (I), A.sup.1 and A.sup.2 each independently represent an aromatic hydrocarbon ring group or an aromatic heterocyclic group, which may have a substituent. * represents a bonding position.