Abstract
It has been reported that homogeneously aligned LC layers could be obtained by shearing the LC materials onthe substrates with a glass rod. In this paper, we tried to get some pretilt angles in LC cells treated by such a shearing method. Aligning properties on the four kinds of polyimide (PI) materials which gave different pretilt biases of about 7 to 14 degrees if rubbed were investigated. We could obtain pretilts of 0.5 to 1.5 degrees on these PI layers by the shearing method. The LC director is parallel to the shearing direction and pretilts out of the substrate surface in the opposite azimuth direction to that the rubbing. By using a UV curable LC system, a decreasing tendency of the pretilt angle with time could be suppressed.
