I investigated the homogeneous liquid crystal alignment using parallel patterning on nickel oxide thin film. Nickel oxide thin film was prepared by sol-gel process, which is and cost effective method to form oxide thin film. Since the sol-gel process is solution driven method, the patterning on nickel oxide can be achieved by imprinting lithography. Nickel oxide with parallel pattern was used for liquid crystal alignment layer, which can be a alternative to conventional rubbing process to aligning a liquid crystal molecules. As a result, a high transmittance of 83.9% was confirmed for the NiO film, and a stable horizontal orientation pretilt angle of 0.2° occurred in the imprinted NiO film. These results were judged to be a positive level that can be commercialized in the horizontal alignment type liquid crystal display that is currently used universally. Anisotropic characteristics of nickel oxide induced by a parallel pattern leads to the alignment of liquid crystals.

Abstract We demonstrate convenient alignment technologies using imprinting lithography with sol-gel process. The aligned nano pattern is fabricated on a silicon wafer by laser interference lithography. For conformal imprinting process, aligned nano pattern was transferred onto the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Using a PDMS sheet with aligned nano pattern, aligned nano pattern was created onto the sol-gel driven hafnium zinc oxide by imprinting lithography. The process was conducted at annealing temperatures of 150 °C. The obtained pattern on the HfZnO film acted as a guide for aligning liquid crystal (LC) molecules. The geometric restriction induced by aligned pattern leads to LC alignment along to the aligned nano pattern. The combination of imprint lithography and solution-processed inorganic materials proved good alternative of LC alignment technique.

The stocker system is another name of automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) and being popularly used as main material handling tools in Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) and semiconductor fabrication facilities. Recently the use of the stocker system

강유전성 액정 분자 배향을 위해 열방성 고분자 액정물질을 배향막으로 사용하고 그표면 morphology를 AFM(Atomic Forced Microscope)으로 관찰한 결과 잘 배향된 sample cell에서도 microgroove 구조가 나타나지 않았음을 관찰하였다. 잘 배향된 sample cell 23:1의 contrast ratio를 보이면서 memory 효과를 나타내었다. 또한 20V의 AC field로 안정화시키자 전형적인 stripe-shaped 무늬가 나타났다.