Alignment of liquid crystals generated by [2 + 2] cycloaddition in alignment layers

Alignment of Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals with Photoanisotropic Azodye Aligning Layers

The photo-induced alignment quality of a ferroelectric liquid crystas (FLC) onto a photochemical stable azodye film was studied for various procedures of the azodye film photo-treatment and the FLC structure. The alignment quality of FLC depends mainly on the order parameter of the azodye film, however the structure of FLC layer is also important. So, the photo-aligned deformed helix ferroelect...

Substrate-induced bulk alignment of liquid crystals.

Self-alignment of liquid crystals in three-dimensional photonic crystals.

We report on the observation of self-alignment of nematic liquid crystals into colloidal photonic crystals, over distances much larger than the typical size of the voids between the spheres. We observe that the infiltrated structure possesses a unique optical axis that is determined by an intrinsic structural anisotropy of photonic crystal opals. We develop a simple model to describe this self-...

Tunable command layers for liquid crystal alignment.

A simple method for the construction of a stable, tunable, self-assembled command layer for liquid crystal display purposes is described. A pyridine-functionalized oligosiloxane spontaneously forms an anisotropic, grooved surface on indium-tin-oxide, enabling it to align liquid crystalline molecules. The pyridine functions act as seeds for the epitaxial growth of stacks of highly ordered zinc p...

Alignment by Langmuir/Schaefer Monolayers of Bent-Core Liquid Crystals

Langmuir films of bent-core molecules at the air/water interface are transferred onto a solid surface by the inverse-Langmuir-Schaefer (ILS) technique. Previous work by the authors demonstrated that ILS films of a symmetric bent-core molecule can serve as effective planar alignment layers for a nematic bent-core liquid crystal cell, but the Langmuir films were unstable and formed multilayers at...