Abstract: Flexoelectric effect on electro-optical characteristics of a nematic liquid crystal cell is investigated.Differential equations and boundary conditions for director of liquid crystal are obtained with variation theory.Distributions of director of nematic liquid crystal (NLC) cells with strong anchoring and weak anchoring are calculated by a finite-difference iterative method.With Jones matrix method,transmittance-voltage characteristics of liquid crystal cells are obtained.Surface flexoelectric effect and bulk flexoelectric effect are considered.

Key words: flexoelectric effect, electro-optical effect, variation theory, finite-difference iterative method, Jones matrix method