Molecular Orientation of Liquid Crystals on Topographic Nanopatterns

Controlling the orientation of building blocks in soft matter on the substrate has been a big challenge in material sciences. We have controlled the molecular orientation of liquid crystal (LC) materials on the porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) film having hexagonal pore arrays on the top surface. In our method, anchoring conditions can be varied by changing the pore size (Dp) and the porosity (P). As a proof-of-concept, the orientation of smectic A (SmA) structure at different anchoring conditions was successfully controlled in a sandwich cell consisting of AAO and a glass substrate, which has not been successfully controlled by conventional methods.