Light-Controlled Alignment of Cholesteric Liquid Crystals on Photosensitive Materials

We report on investigation of photoalignment of cholesteric liquid crystal on phenylone-based photosensitive material as aligning layer. We found that reflective and electro-optical characteristics of cholesteric cells strongly depended on the dose of irradiation of a photoaligning layer with polarized UV light. Irradiation resulted in orientation of initially chaotically oriented planar domains in a direction determined with incident UV-light polarization and in narrowing of the dependence of light scattering by a planar structure on the scattering angle. The long enough exposure resulted in scattering and electro-optical characteristics not worse than obtained with standard rubbing technology. The photosensitive orientant possesses evident advantages of the effective control of cholesteric textures.