Liquid crystal optical device and its production process

A process for producing a liquid crystal optical device, which comprises a step of forming an alignment layer to align a liquid crystal on each of facing surfaces of a pair of substrates having an electrode pair;

• a step of bonding the substrates each having the alignment layer formed and supplying a liquid crystal composition comprising a liquid crystal and a curable compound represented by the following formula (1) between the substrates;
• and a step of applying an external energy to carry out the curing reaction of the curable compound while a voltage is applied between the pair of substrates to control the alignment of liquid crystal composition to be in a desired direction, thereby to form a polymer structure on each alignment layer;
• wherein when a voltage is not applied, by the polymer structure, liquid crystal molecules in the vicinity of an interface between the liquid crystal layer and the polymer structure have at least one direction of a director different from the alignment direction by the alignment layer:
• A1-O—R1—O—Z—O—R2—O-A2 Formula (1)
• wherein each of A1 and A2 is independently a curable functional group to be polymerized by the external energy, each of R1 and R2 is independently selected from a linear alkylene group with carbon number of 2 to 5 which may have a methyl group or an ethyl group, and Z is a bivalent mesogen structure.