Photopatterned Coatable Polarizer for Flexible Display

We present a novel method to photopattern a thin-film polarizer from a photosensitive lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal (LCLC) solution based on perylene dye. The photosensitive LCLC solution was prepared by dissolving 20-30 wt% of amine-functionalized perylene chromonic dye in an acrylic acid solution containing a photoinitiator and a multifunctional monomer. The shear-coated film after UV irradiation under a photomask and a subsequent development process exhibited the maximum polarization efficiency, P = 98. 3%, with 10 mu m line-and-space maximum resolution. The structure of the resulting photopatterned thin-film polarizer was investigated using polarized optical microscopy (POM) and a NanoView (R) three-dimensional (3D) surface profiler. (c) 2013 The Japan Society of Applied Physics