Fabrication and analysis of surface relief structures induced by spatially selective photopolymerization and investigation of their molecular alignment

Abstract

Control of molecular alignment in polymer films is of great importance to improve their surface functionality. Especially, surface structures of polymer films containing aligned liquid-crystalline molecules are changed owing to external stimuli, which is dependent on the patterned molecular alignment. In this study, we fabricated surface relief structures induced by novel molecular photoalignment process triggered by spatially selective photopolymerization and investigated the molecular alignment behavior in the obtained surface structures.