Control of liquid crystal pretilt angle by anchoring competition of the stacked alignment layers

Abstract

We proposed a method to control the pretilt angle of liquid crystals by stacking of a vertical alignment layer on a planar alignment layer. The pretilt angle can be controlled over the full range (0 degrees-90 degrees) depending on the thickness of the vertical alignment layer. We also proposed a numerical model to describe the physical mechanism based on the anchoring competition between liquid crystal, planar, and vertical polyimide alignment layers.