Liquid Crystal Alignment of Ion Beam Treatment

Uniform alignment of liquid crystal molecule is necessary for high quality liquid crystal displays(LCDs). Now, a rubbing method has been widely used to align LC molecules on the polyimide(PI) surface. However, the rubbing method has some disadvantage, such as the generation of electrostatic charges and the creation of contaminating particles. To overcome these problems, a non-rubbing-free method is highly desirable for future generation of large, high-resolution LCD technology. The ion beam method which is one of the rubbing-free method was used as the alignment process as well as powerful industrial applications. In this study, we observed changes of property of thin film and pretilt angle of liquid crystal due to the variation of the ion beam density, energy and irradiation time. In addition to, we checked voltage-transmittance (V-T) to evaluate the electro-optical characteristics as well as the changes of the structural property were analyzed with AFM analysis. Also, we obtained large area and uniform beam (480mm) in ion beam treatment using DuoPIGatron ion source for industrial application in the future