Near-zero pretilt alignment of liquid crystals using polyimide films doped with UV-curable polymer

We propose an alignment method for the near-zero pretilt angle of liquid crystals (LCs) using polyimide films doped with a UV-curable polymer. The near-zero pretilt angle can be obtained by UV curing of reactive mesogen monomers mixed with planar alignment material while a vertical electric field is applied to an LC cell assembled after the rubbing process. We demonstrated that the pretilt angle can be decreased from 2.390° to 0.082° by employing the proposed method.