title: Photoinduced Micropattern Alignment of Semiconductor Nanorods with Polarized Emission in a Liquid Crystal Polymer Matrix.
abstract: Photoalignment technology provides high alignment quality with an exceptional control over the local director of liquid crystals. Because of the reorientation ability of sulfonic azo dye molecules, they offer high azimuthal and polar anchoring energy with a low pretilt angle for the orientation of liquid crystals and liquid crystal composites. In this work, we make use of this approach to align thin film composites of light-emitting semiconductor nanorods dispersed in a liquid crystal polymer into both one-dimensional and two-dimensional microscale patterns. After unidirectional alignment, the patterns are fabricated by a second irradiation with different polarization azimuth and the employment of a photomask. Fluorescence micrographs reveal the nanorod pattern alignment in domain sizes down to 2 μm. Apart from demonstrating the possibility of controlling the orientation of anisotropic nanocrystals with strongly polarized emission on microscopic scale, our results are promising for the fabrication of complex nanostructures for photonic applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Materials Science and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong SAR.
authors.forename: Julian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong SAR.
authors.forename: Wanlong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong SAR.
authors.forename: Abhishek K
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5345-6405
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Srivastava
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong SAR.
authors.forename: Vladimir G
authors.initials: VG
authors.lastname: Chigrinov
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Advanced Displays and Optoelectronics Technologies, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Hong Kong SAR.
authors.forename: Hoi-Sing
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Kwok
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Materials Science and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong , Hong Kong SAR.
authors.forename: Andrey L
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8263-8141
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Rogach
keywords: Nanorods; liquid crystal polymer; patterns; photoalignment; polarized emission