Abstract
In fabrication of liquid-crystal (LC) display devices, rubbed polyimide films on glass substrates are widely used to align bulk liquid- crystal molecules in a preferred direction. It is believed that rubbing induces anisotropic chain orientation on the polymer surfaces, and the subsequent LC-polymer interaction leads to the bulk LC alignment,1 but the detailed surface structure of the rubbed polyimide is not known. Polarized Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) measurements2 have shown that rubbing indeed induces anisotropy in the IR absorption of the polyimide film. However, due to inherent lack of surface sensitivity of the linear-absorption technique, the weak observed anisotropy cannot be directly related to the structural change of the polymer surface.
© 1998 Optical Society of America
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