Surface-mediated alignment of liquid crystals with polarized light (Invited Paper)

Abstract

Liquid crystals are utilized in many display applications. The use of liquid crystals in electro- optic phase devices, spatial light modulators and laser optics is becoming increasingly more common. Critical to most of these applications is the uniform macroscopic alignment of the liquid crystals. We have discovered a new process of controlling the local macroscopic alignment of liquid crystal molecules using polarized light. This discovery gives an additional degree of freedom in controlling liquid crystal alignment. In addition, complex devices (i.e., binary phase devices) that would be difficult to achieve using conventional alignment techniques (i.e., buffing, deposition, etc.) may be readily attainable using optical techniques. The optically induced alignment described in this paper possesses memory, write-rewrite capability, and high spatial resolution on the order of micrometers or less.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.