title: Optical and surface morphological properties of polarizing films fabricated from a chromonic dye by the photoalignment technique.
abstract: The inherent chromonic lyotropic liquid crystalline properties of a dye have been manipulated to fabricate multi-axial micropolarizing thin films by means of the photoalignment technique. The dye aqueous solution is deposited on a photopatterned polymer film to result in the macroscopic alignment of the dye molecules, followed by drying at ambient temperature. The solid polarizing dye layers thus produced exhibit very a high contrast ratio and degree of polarization in the region of visible light. Addition of a small amount of surfactant to the dye solution is a prerequisite for the generation of a nematic chromonic phase and for the formation of homogeneous thin dye layers on the polymer film. The correlation between the optical and surface morphological properties of the dye layers is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Materials and Chemical Process, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Central 5-2, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ruslim
authors.forename: Masanori
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hashimoto
authors.forename: Daisaku
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Matsunaga
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tamaki
authors.forename: Kunihiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ichimura
mesh_terms: D004396:Coloring Agents / Q000737:chemistry*; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D015394:Molecular Structure; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D010316:Particle Size; D010777:Photochemistry; D013499:Surface Properties; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: D004396:Coloring Agents; D008567:Membranes, Artificial