Abstract
Aligning liquid crystal (LC) molecules into spatially non-uniform orientation patterns is central to the functionalities of many emerging LC devices. Recently, we developed a new projection photopatterning technique by using plasmonic metamasks (PMMs), and demonstrated high-resolution and high-throughput patterning of molecular orientations into arbitrary patterns. Here we present comparisons between two different types of metamask designs: one based on curvilinear nanoslits in metal films; the other based on rectangular nanoapertures in metal films. By using numerical simulations and experimental studies, we show that the PMMs based on curvilinear nanoslits exhibit advantages in their broadband and high optical transmission, while face challenges in mask designing for arbitrary molecular orientations. In contrast, the PMMs based on nanoapertures, though limited in optical transmission, present the great advantage of allowing for patterning arbitrary molecular orientation fields.
Highlights
The success of the liquid crystal (LC) display technologies relies partly on the development of the low-cost rubbing technique for aligning molecules into uniform directions
In order to lift these limitations, we developed a new projection photopatterning technique for arbitrary two-dimensional LC molecular orientations, which is based on plasmonic metamasks (PMMs) [27]
Photoalignment originates from the anisotropic molecular orientations in photoactive materials such as azo-dyes induced by linearly polarized light [28,29,30,31]
Summary
The success of the liquid crystal (LC) display technologies relies partly on the development of the low-cost rubbing technique for aligning molecules into uniform directions. Complex periodic patterns of molecular orientations can be obtained through photoalignments by using interference of laser beams [23,24]. Another development is to use curvilinear nanogrooves generated on polyimide films by tips of an atomic force microscope [25]. Recent studies have extended the photoalignment techniques to lyotropic LC systems [19,26] These techniques are ideal for research purposes and fast device prototyping, but face challenges for large-scale manufacturing because of the serial nature of their processes or incapability to achieve arbitrary director fields in some cases
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