Control of surface anchoring properties of liquid crystal by thermo-transfer printing of siloxane oligomers

Abstract

We presented the results for the surface anchoring properties of a nematic liquid crystal (LC) in a wide range of the substrate wettability through thermo-transfer printing of siloxane oligomers. For the modification of the surface energy, poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) oligomers were directly transferred onto a glass substrate from a bulk PDMS plate by contact printing at elevated temperatures. The hydrophobicity of the PDMS-modified surface was found to increase with the temperature of the substrate during transfer printing. The LC alignment on the PDMS-modified substrate exhibited continuous variations of the pretilt angle from nearly 0° to 90° and the polar anchoring strength according to the surface energy.

Keywords:

• liquid crystal alignment
• pretilt angle
• thermo-transfer printing
• poly(dimethylsiloxane)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Samsung Display Company, Brain Korea 21 Plus Project in 2014.