Odd-even behavior for the emergence of ferroelectricity and antiferroelectricity has been examined in bent-core compounds containing two different chain lengths
i.e., 1: 1 mixtures of neighboring homologues of symmetric bent-core mesogens and nonsymmetric pure compounds. The odd-even behavior was found to be very strictly held for longer terminal chains: longer terminal chains play an important role in determining the polar structure. Namely, the ferroelectric state emerges when the carbon number n of the longer chain is even, whereas the antiferroelectric state emerges for odd n. © 2006 The Japan Society of Applied Physics.