Azimuthal Anchoring Energy in Photoinduced Anisotropic Films

Abstract

Most electrooptic effects in liquid crystals require a uniform orientation of the director at the glass substrates. A new method to produce suitable alignment layers is based on the creation of anisotropic polymer films by photopolymerization with linearly polarized light. In the present paper we report on measurements of the anchoring strength of these photo-induced anisotropic films. Using a wedge-cell technique, we find an azimuthal anchoring energy of W ϕ ≈2.3·10 -6 J/m 2 .