A liquid crystal device comprising ferroelectric liquid crystal material aligned by a liquid crystal polymer network layer under 20 nm thick, which itself was aligned by a photo-oriented linearly photopolymerized layer under 20 nm thick, exhibits low voltage drop over the aligning layer and has a remarkable contrast ratio. The simulation is based on calculations of resist development that take into account a distribution of resist-development rate. The memory element does not threshold because the element is read and the current stopped prior to triggering the memory element.