A Review of Nanostructured Alignment Layers for Liquid Crystals

We review some recent investigations of nanostructured alignment surfaces for liquid crystals. These surfaces are heterogeneous and yet can give uniform alignment of the liquid crystal and are able to give any pretilt angles in the range of 0-90 degrees reliably and controllably. The conditions for having such uniform alignment properties are studied. Three techniques for the generation of such nanostructured surfaces are reviewed