Liquid Crystals: Controlled Planar Alignment of Discotic Liquid Crystals in Microchannels Made Using SU8 Photoresist (Adv. Funct. Mater. 48/2013)

摘要

An optical micrograph taken by R. J. Bushby and co-workers using crossed polarizers shows a thin film of 1,4,8,11,15,18,22,25-octaoctylphthalocyanine in its columnar rectangular liquid crystal phase at 100 °C. In such thin, open-to-the-air films, the columns are aligned in-plane but follow random sweeping lines. However, when open-to-the-air films are confined within micrometer-scale channels formed from SU8, all of the columns are aligned and point in the same direction, as shown on page 5997.