New Photocrosslinking Polymeric Materials for Liquid Crystal Photoalignment

Abstract

The photoinduced alignment (photoalignment) of nematic liquid crystals (LC) is of great interest as a contactless technique to create patterned LC aligning layers which have good prospect as basic elements of nonlinear optical devices like controllable waveguide structures with discrete diffraction, statical and dynamical photonic media etc. LC photoalignment on the surface of benzaldehyde polymeric layer caused by photochemical reaction of benzaldehyde side groups is investigated experimentally and by numerical simulations. Arguments are offered to consider the photoalignment as based on formation of photocrosslinks involving anisotropic conjugated molecular structures.