Measurement of dynamic viscoelasticity and birefringence of liquid crystal adjacent to alignment film

Abstract

In this study, we succeeded in simultaneously measuring dynamic viscoelasticity and molecular orientation of photo-aligned liquid crystal (5CB) adjacent to alignment film by using highly-sensitive shear force measuring method, which we have originally developed, combined with birefringence measurement. Our experimental results showed that the relationship between nanometer-sized gap widths and viscoelasticity strongly depends on the molecular orientation.