The field of liquid crystal display (LCD) is constantly in the spotlight and the process of depositing an alignment layer in the LCD manufacturing process is very important to obtain excellent performance such as low-power driving and high-speed response to improve LCD performance. Therefore, research on liquid crystal (LC) alignment is being actively conducted. When manufacturing LCD, it is necessary to consider the effect of the alignment layer thickness as one of the factors affecting various LCD performances. In addition, previous studies confirmed the LC alignment characteristics correlate with the rotation speed in the spin coating process. Therefore, the electro-optical properties of the LCD were investigated by manufacturing a polyimide alignment layer by varying the rotation speed in the spin coating process in this study. It was confirmed that the thickness of the polyimide alignment layer was controlled according to the spin coating conditions. The average transmittances of anti-parallel LC cells at the spin coating speed of 2,500 rpm and 3,000 rpm are about 60%, which indicates that the LC cell has relatively higher performance. At the spin coating speed of 3,000 rpm, the voltage-transmittance curve of twisted nematic (TN) LC cell was below 1.5 V, which means that the TN LC cell operated at a low power. In addition, high-speed operating characteristics were confirmed with a response time of less than 30 ms. From these derived data, we confirmed that the ideal spin coating speed is 3,000 rpm. And these results provide an optimized polyimide alignment layer process when considering enhanced future LCD manufacturing.

We investigated a solution-driven Yttrium Tin Oxide (YSnO) film that was imprinted using a parallel nanostructure as a liquid crystal (LC) alignment layer. The imprinting process was conducted at the annealing temperature of 100℃. To evaluate the effect of this process, we conducted surface analyses including atomic force microscopy (AFM). During imprinting, the surface roughness was reduced, and anisotropic characteristics were observed. Planar LC alignment was observed at a pretilt angle of 0.22° on YSnO film. Surface anisotropy induced by imprinting method forces LC to align along the direction of the parallel nanostructure, which is an alternative to conventional polyimide treated using a rubbing process.

The alignment characteristics of liquid crystal (LC) molecules on a solution-derived lanthanum zinc oxide (LZO) film under ion-beam irradiation were demonstrated. Using the solution process, an LZO film was fabricated on the glass substrate and cured at 100℃. Afterwards, ion-beam irradiation was performed following the LC alignment method. Using this film, an LC cell was fabricated and the characteristics of the LC alignment were verified. Cross polarizing microscopy and the crystal rotation method were used to investigate the alignment state of the LC molecules on the LZO films. Furthermore, field emission scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used to explore the effect of the ion-beam irradiation on the LZO film. Through these, it was confirmed that the ion-beam irradiation induced surface modification, which demonstrated anisotropic physical and chemical surface characteristics. Due to this, uniform LC alignment was achieved. Finally, the residual DC and anchoring energy of the LC cell based on the LZO films were measured using a capacitance-voltage curve.

We demonstrate an alignment technology using an imprinting process on an inorganic NiOx film. The aligned nanopattern was fabricated on a silicon wafer by laser interference lithography. The aligned nano pattern was then imprinted onto the sol-gel driven NiOx film using an imprinting process at an annealing temperature of 150℃. After the imprinting process, parallel grooves had been formed on the NiOx film. Atomic force microscopy and water contact angle measurements were performed to confirm the parallel groove on the NiOx film. The grooves caused liquid crystal alignment through geometric restriction, similar to grooves formed by the rubbing process on polyimide. The liquid crystal cell exhibited a pretilt angle of 0.2°, which demonstrated homogeneous alignment.

Effect of multi-stacked layer (MSL), 0.1 mol (M) and 0.3 mol (M) hafnium oxide (HfO2)alignment layers were fabricated via a solution-process for LCs orientation. The solutions were spin-coated and annealed in a furnace. MSL consists of three sub-layers using 0.1 M solution,mono-layer (ML) is composed of 0.3 M HfO2 solution. Then ion-beam irradiation was treated with 1.8keV for 2 min. HfO2-based LC cells were investigated through photographs, pre-tilt angle using crystal rotation method, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurement, and surface roughness using atomic force microscopy(AFM) for their characteristic research. Good LC orientation characteristics were observed on MSL HfO2 surface. The LC alignment mechanism on MSL HfO2 and ML HfO2 surfaces was attributed to van der Waals (VDW) interaction between the LC molecular and substrate surface.

Apart from the deposition of alignment layer, alignment process needs to be involved for alignment of liquid crystal (LC) molecules. To simplify manufacturing process, several method were used such as rubbing, ion-beam irradiation, UV irradiation, and lithography. But, eventually it needs another treatment for LC alignment. Here, we suggested Si induced polyimide (PI) alignment layer at low temperature. Using this method, we are able to eliminate the alignment process and found that the alignment and electro-optic performance are much better than that of the rubbed PI LC cells. Compared to the rubbed PI cells, the response time was decreased by 70% and C-V characteristics have hysteresis-free.