Liquid Crystal Alignment Properties on Zirconia Doped Polyimide Layer

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This paper introduces zirconia (ZrO2) use in liquid crystal (LC) alignment for uniform and effective LC orientation. We used a conventional rubbing process to induce LC alignment. As a result, uniform LC alignments were achieved in all samples with ZrO2 nanoparticles from 0.01 wt% to 0.3 wt%. Pretilt angles of LCs on ZrO2 nanoparticles doped LC alignment layers slightly increased as the percentage of ZrO2 nanoparticles rose. However, contact angles were almost the same. When twist-nematic (TN) LC cells used LC alignment layers with ZrO2 nanoparticle content of 0.1 wt%, best performance was shown. Finally, it is shown that ZrO2 nanoparticles doped LC alignment layers have more thermal budget than pristine ones in thermal stability test.