• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.398-398
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• 2007

The Liquid Crystal (LC) alignment uniformity is very important in LC devices. The alignment mechanism of LC molecules on a rubbed polyimide (PI) surface is very important for both LC fundamental research and application. So, Generally a rubbing method to align LC has been widely used to mass-produce LCD panels. But because rubbing method is contact method between rubbing fabric and indium-tin-oxide glass or flexible substrate, rubbing method has some defects, such as the electrode charges and the creation of contaminating particles. Thus we strongly recommend a non-contact alignment technique for getting rid of some defects of rubbing method. Most recently, the LC aligning capabilities achieved by ion-beam exposure on the organic and nonorganic thin film surface have been reported successfully. In this research, we studied the tilt angle generation and electro-optical performances for a NLC on homeotropic polyimide surfaces with ion-beam exposure. The LC aligning capabilities of a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) on a homeotropic PI surface using a new ion-beam method were studied. On the homeotropic PI surface, the tilt angle of the NLC by exposure ion-beam had a tendency to decrease as increased ion-beam energy density. And, on the homeotropic PI surface, the alignment character of the NLC with respect to ion-beam energy was good. And we achieved satisfactory result for EO character.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.594-598
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• 2019

We demonstrate an alternative alignment process using transferring process on solution driven HfZnO film. Parallel pattern is firstly fabricated on a silicon wafer by laser interference lithography. Prepared HfZnO solution fabricated by sol-gel process is spin-coated on a glass substrate. The silicon wafer with parallel pattern is placed on the HfZnO film and annealed at $100^{\circ}C$ for 30 min. After transferring process, parallel grooves on the HfZnO film is obtained which is confirmed by atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Uniform liquid crystal alignment is achieved which is attributed to an anisotropic characteristic of HfZnO film by parallel grooves. The liquid crystal cell exhibited a pretilt angle of $0.25^{\circ}$ which showed a homogeneous alignment property.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.72-77
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• 2019

The display that provides information to us through the visual sense is a very important information transmission means by intuitively transmitting information, and the liquid crystal display (LCD) is the most widely used information transmission display. In this paper, we studied solvent assisted micromolding as an alternative for the rubbing that is essential to align the liquid crystals in LCD and successfully aligned the liquid crystal molecules by constructing the nanostructures on conventional polyimide alignment layer. When generating the nanostructures on the polyimide film, there was a competitive correlation between the dissolution effect of the polymer by the solvent and the capillary effect of the polyimide molecules into the nanostructures of the mold depending on the process temperature. It was possible to form nanostructures with high step by deriving the optimum temperature. These nanostructures were able to align the liquid crystal molecules uniformly and demonstrated that they could form a desirable pretilt angle.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.321-327
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• 2022

In this paper, a wrinkled structure was formed on the PDMS surface through UV/Ozone treatment, and the wrinkle structure formation mechanism was revealed through physicochemical characterization. A wrinkle structure was formed on the PDMS surface through UV/Ozone treatment for 30 min, and periodic wrinkle formation on the PDMS surface was confirmed by cross-sectional imaging of the scanning electron microscope. In addition, through x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy spectral analysis, it was confirmed that the silica-like-surface of SiOx on the PDMS surface was formed by UV/Ozone. The results of this study not only improve the understanding of the mechanism of wrinkle structure formation on the PDMS surface by UV/Ozone treatment, but also can be used as a basic study to adjust the amplitude and period of the wrinkle structure according to UV/Ozone irradiation conditions in the future.contact angles and the surface energies of FSAMs, it was confirmed that pretilt angles of LC molecules increased according to the alkyl chain length. High optical transparency and uniform homeotropic LC alignment characteristics of FSAMs showed the possibility of FSAMs as an LC alignment layers.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.109-115
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• 2023

In this paper, we demonstrated the orientation characteristics of liquid crystals using UV-treated FSAM as alignment layer. Moreover we confirmed the FSAM properties before and after UV treatment on indium tin oxide (ITO) glass substrates using physicochemical analysis. The hydrophobic property of the FSAM surface is change to hydrophilic through UV treatment. After UV treatment the LC molecules also were uniformly and horizontally aligned on the FSAM surfaces and the pretilt angle was obviously changed 90° degrees to 0° degrees. EO characteristic of TN cell which was fabricated with UV-treated FSAM was faster response time compare to conventional PI layer. The FSAM before and after UV treatment has a superior application potential as the LC alignment layer for LCD, potentially replacing the conventional polyimide layer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.430-430
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• 2007

In general, polyimides (PIs) are used in liquid crystal displays (LCDs) as alignment layer of liquid crystals (LCs). Up to date, the rubbing alignment technique has been widely used to align liquid crystals on the PI surface, which is suitable for mass-production of LCDs because of its simple process and high productivity. However, this method has some disadvantages. Rubbed PI surfaces include the debris left by the cloth and the generation of electrostatic charges during rubbing process. Therefore, rubbing-free techniques for LC alignment are strongly required in LCD technology. In this experiment, PI was uniformly coated on indium-tin-oxide electrode substrates to form LC alignment layers using a spin-coating method and the PI layers were subsequently imidized at 433 K for 1 h. The thickness of the PI layer was set at 50 nm. The LC alignment layer surfaces were exposed to an $Ar^+$ ion-beam under various ion-beam energies. The antiparallel cells and twisted-nematic (TN) cells for the measurement of pretile angle and electro-optical characteristics were fabricated with the cell gap of 60 and $5\;{\mu}m$, respectively. The LC cells were filled with nematic LC (NLC, MJ001929, Merck) and were assembled. The NLC alignment capability on ion-beam-treated PI was observed using photomicroscope and the pretilt angle of the NLC was measured by the crystal-rotation method at room temperature. Voltage-transmittance (V-T) and response time characteristics of the ion-beam irradiated TN cell were measured by a LCD evaluation system.