Liquid crystal alignment on photopolymer surfaces exposed by linearly polarized uv light.

Abstract

A photo-alignment of nematic liquid crystals (NLC) on a photopolymer film of polyvinyl cinnamate (PVCi) has been achieved by using linearlypolarized UV light. The mechanism of the LC alignment is clarified and good unidirectional LC alignment with pretilt angle is obtained by appropriate combination of normal and oblique exposure of linearly-polarized UV light to the PVCi films. This photo-alignment method is applied to fabricate super-multidomain (SMD) TN-LCDs making a feature of quartered pixels, and we demonstrate that reverse tilt disclination (RTD)-free SMD TN-LCDs is successfully fabricated by using the photo-alignment method.