Photoinduced thermal orientation of polymer liquid crystals: Effect of the substituent of the mesogenic side group

Abstract

We investigated the effect of the substituent of the mesogenic side group of the copolymer liquid crystal films on the photoinduced alignment behavior. The optical anisotropy of the polymer films was induced by the linearly polarized (LP) UV photoreaction followed by annealing around the clearing temperature. We clarified that the polymer should exhibit liquid crystallinity to achieve the thermal orientation of the mesogenic side groups.