Ruslim Christian, Hashimoto Masanori, Matsunaga Daisaku, Tamaki Takashi, Ichimura Kunihiro
Institute for Materials and Chemical Process, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Central 5-2, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan.
Langmuir. 2004 Jan 6;20(1):95-100. doi: 10.1021/la035366e.
The inherent chromonic lyotropic liquid crystalline properties of a dye have been manipulated to fabricate multi-axial micropolarizing thin films by means of the photoalignment technique. The dye aqueous solution is deposited on a photopatterned polymer film to result in the macroscopic alignment of the dye molecules, followed by drying at ambient temperature. The solid polarizing dye layers thus produced exhibit very a high contrast ratio and degree of polarization in the region of visible light. Addition of a small amount of surfactant to the dye solution is a prerequisite for the generation of a nematic chromonic phase and for the formation of homogeneous thin dye layers on the polymer film. The correlation between the optical and surface morphological properties of the dye layers is discussed.
