2004 年 25 巻 3 号 p. 146-151
The orientation of liquid crystal molecules is crucially influenced by the surface properties of substrates. Surface-mediated photoalignment now occupies one of the important areas of liquid crystal technologies. Development of photoalignment for many types of materials other than liquid crystals may open new opportunities in the materials science and technology. This article introduces our recent results on the photoalignment of polymer materials (polysilanes) and mesoporous silica materials based on the orientational transfer from a photoresponsive monolayer irradiated with linearly polarized light.