Find in Library

We have developed a very useful and cost-effective liquid crystal (LC) alignment layer of brush-coated TiO₂ that is solution-processable for twisted nematic (TN) LC cells. TiO₂ was prepared via the sol-gel method. The TiO₂ solution was brush-coated on the substrate, followed by an annealing process. During the brush-coating process, a retracting force is generated on the deposited TiO solutions along the coating direction. The annealing process hardens the TiO₂ and generates shearing stress arising from the retracting force along the brush-coating direction. The shearing stress created highly oriented nano/microstructure and uniformly aligned LCs with a stable pretilt angle of 0.6°. TN mode LC cells based on brush-coated TiO₂ exhibited a performance of 12.5 ms of response and a threshold voltage of 1.8 V. Our brush-coated TiO₂ incorporates two steps of the film deposition and alignment process into one step.