Solution-Derived Hafnium Lanthanum Oxide Films Prepared Using Ion-Beam Irradiation and Their Applications as Alignment Layers for Twisted-Nematic Liquid Crystal Displays

Abstract

We present the alignment characteristics of LC (liquid crystal) molecules on solution-derived HLO (hafnium lanthanum oxide) films fabricated using IB (ion-beam) irradiation. We then demonstrated that LC molecules can be homogeneously and uniformly aligned on the HLO film irradiated at an IB incident energy of 1.2 keV. Physicochemical analysis methods such as atomic force microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used to verify the LC alignment mechanism on the IB-irradiated HLO film. In addition, the electro-optical performance of a TN (twisted-nematic) cell fabricated using the IB-irradiated HLO film exhibited characteristics superior to those of the conventional TN cell fabricated using a rubbed polyimide layer.