Surface-Induced Parallel Alignment of Liquid Crystals by Linearly Polymerized Photopolymers

Martin Schadt*, Klaus Schmitt, Vladimir Kozinkov, Vladimir Chigrinov

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Articlepeer-review

1213 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Photopolymerization of polymer-coated solid substrates with linearly polarized light is shown to induce an anisotropic, uniaxial orientation of polymer molecules. The linearly photopolymerized (LPP) layers exhibit UV dichroism and optical anisotropy. The resulting anisotropic dispersive surface interaction forces are shown to align adjacent liquid crystals parallel. A qualitative microscopic model is presented. The new LPP-alignment technique allows to generate homogeneous LC-director pattern with different azimuthal director angles on the same substrate requiring no mechanical treatment. The use of LPP substrates in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is shown to enable to combine different electrooptical effects-such as twisted nematic (TN) and parallel configurations-in the same hybrid LCD. Besides from high-contrast LPP-aligned TN-LCDs, LPP-aligned supertwisted nematic (STN)-LCDs exhibiting steep transmission-voltage characteristics are presented.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2155-2164
Number of pages10
JournalJapanese Journal of Applied Physics, Part 1: Regular Papers and Short Notes and Review Papers
Volume31
Issue number7 R
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 1992
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Liquid crystal alignment
  • Liquid crystal displays
  • Liquid crystals
  • Liquid-crystal-surface interaction

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