Fabricating Polymer Canopies onto Structured Surfaces Using Liquid Scaffolds

Accessing Thin Film Wetting Regimes during Polymer Growth by Initiated Chemical Vapor Deposition

We investigate the growth of a fluorinated polymer via initiated chemical vapor deposition onto a suite of isotropic and mesogenic liquids with a range of refractive indices. The polymer morphology at fluid interfaces was found to deviate from conformal films predicted by the positive spreading coefficient, and the resulting morphology is attributed to long-range van der Waals interactions during the deposition process. Experiments systematically vary the deposition conditions and compare the liquid phase (isotropic or nematic) to evaluate the effect of kinetic factors and the liquid substrate phase on the interfacial polymer morphology and spatial organization.

Shear Induced TiO2 Nano Structure Using Brush-Coating for Liquid Crystal Alignment

We have developed a very useful and cost-effective liquid crystal (LC) alignment layer of brush-coated TiO2 that is solution-processable for twisted nematic (TN) LC cells. TiO2 was prepared via the sol-gel method. The TiO2 solution was brush-coated on the substrate, followed by an annealing process. During the brush-coating process, a retracting force is generated on the deposited TiO solutions along the coating direction. The annealing process hardens the TiO2 and generates shearing stress arising from the retracting force along the brush-coating direction. The shearing stress created highly oriented nano/microstructure and uniformly aligned LCs with a stable pretilt angle of 0.6°. TN mode LC cells based on brush-coated TiO2 exhibited a performance of 12.5 ms of response and a threshold voltage of 1.8 V. Our brush-coated TiO2 incorporates two steps of the film deposition and alignment process into one step.