Optical birefringent film by photoreactive monomer/polymer liquid crystal composites

Abstract

We demonstrated that optical birefringent films can be produced from photoreactive monomer/polymer liquid crystal composites by the irradiation with linearly polarized LPUV light and subsequent annealing. We used photocrosslinkable monomer with methacrylate end groups and methacrylate polymer with cinnamoyl alkoxybiphenyl side-groups. The composite of these materials did not exhibit liquid crystalinity. High optical anisotropy induced after annealing although the photoinduced anisotropy was very small.