An object of the present invention is to provide a liquid crystal composition suitable for producing liquid crystal display elements which reduces the risk of the formation of droplet traces during production and allows a liquid crystal material to be ejected at a constant rate during an ODF process without deteriorating the properties of the liquid crystal display element, such as dielectric anisotropy, viscosity, nematic-phase upper-limit temperature, nematic-phase stability at a low temperature, and γ.sub.1, and the image sticking resistance of the display element, and a liquid crystal display element including the liquid crystal composition. Provided are a liquid crystal composition having a negative dielectric anisotropy, the liquid crystal composition including one or more compounds represented by General Formula (I), one or more compounds represented by General Formula (II), and the compound represented by Formula (IIIb-1) and a liquid crystal display element including the liquid crystal composition.

A liquid crystal composition containing a polymerizable compound and an application of the liquid crystal composition. The liquid crystal composition comprises a nematic phase liquid crystal composition and at least contains one or more polymerizable compounds represented by general formula (I). Compared with existing liquid crystal compositions, the polymerizable compound in the liquid crystal composition has the advantages of faster polymerization rate, smaller pretilt angle change, higher conversion rate, and less residue, the problem that existing PSVA-type liquid crystal display is bad is mitigated to a large extent, the amount of pretilt angle change is reduced, and the area Mura problem is solved.

##STR00001##

There are provided a liquid crystal composition containing one or two or more compounds represented by general formula (L) and three or four or more dichroic dyes selected from azo compounds, and a guest-host liquid crystal display device or light-controlling device that uses the liquid crystal composition. The liquid crystal composition according to the present invention contains dichroic dyes that satisfy high contrast, high solubility, high nematic-isotropic transition temperature (T.sub.NI), and low birefringent anisotropy (Δn) effective for high light resistance and high thermal resistance at the same time. The use of the liquid crystal composition according to the present invention provides a liquid crystal display device or a light-controlling device that exhibits a good-looking black color and has high contrast, high display quality, and high practicality.

There are provided a liquid crystal composition containing one or two or more compounds represented by general formula (L) and three or four or more dichroic dyes selected from azo compounds, and a guest-host liquid crystal display device or light-controlling device that uses the liquid crystal composition. The liquid crystal composition according to the present invention contains dichroic dyes that satisfy high contrast, high solubility, high nematic-isotropic transition temperature (T.sub.NI), and low birefringent anisotropy (n) effective for high light resistance and high thermal resistance at the same time. The use of the liquid crystal composition according to the present invention provides a liquid crystal display device or a light-controlling device that exhibits a good-looking black color and has high contrast, high display quality, and high practicality.

The invention relates to an electro-optical liquid-crystal display having a re-alignment layer for re-alignment of the liquid crystals whose field has a component, crucial for the re-alignment, parallel to the liquid-crystal layer, containing a liquid-crystalline medium, characterized in that it comprises one or more compounds of the formula I1 to I3, (I1) (I2) (I3) and at least one compound of the formula II, in which the parameters R.sup.11, R.sup.11*, Z.sup.0, Sp, k, l, p, Y.sup.21 to Y.sup.22, R.sup.21 and R.sup.22 have the meanings indicated in claim 1.