Photo Alignment of Liquid Crystals by an Azo Dye Doped Reactive Mesogen Layer

Azobenzene dye doped reactive mesogen is used as thin photo control layer to align permanently nematic liquid crystal molecules. It is shown that, even in the case of a non mesogenic dye, the reactive mesogen matrix follows its photo induced reorientation rather efficiently. Polarimetric and electrooptic studies are performed to characterize this process. Storage, additional UV and thermal processing are then applied to evaluate, in a first approximation, the reliability of obtained layers.