Collective Competition between Two Mesogens showing Opposing Orientational Nature in Side Chain Liquid Crystalline Polymers

Thin films of liquid crystalline polymethacrylates possessing an azobenzene and a cyanobiphenyl side chain exhibit a homeotropic and planar mesogen orientation, respectively. Here, we report a systematic study on the evaluations of collective orientation preference of the above hybrids changing the mesogen ratio obtained by random copolymerization. At intermediate polymerization ratios, both the in-plane and out-of-plane photoalignments were efficiently achieved by light irradiation.