Annealed zinc oxide films for controlling the alignment of liquid crystals

It is observed that the anchoring of LC molecules aligned on the ZnO film depends on the surface wettability. We demonstrate that the surface wettability of ZnO films fabricated by sol–gel process can be modified by annealing. The observations using the scanning electron microscope, photoluminescenc...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of materials science 2017-08, Vol.52 (16), p.9539-9545
Main Authors: Hu, Jia-Wei, Yang, Sheng-Hsiung, Jeng, Shie-Chang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anchoring
Annealing
Characterization and Evaluation of Materials
Chemical composition
Chemistry and Materials Science
Classical Mechanics
Composites
Contact angle
Crystallography and Scattering Methods
Electron microscopes
Liquid crystals
Materials Science
Morphology
Organic chemistry
Oxide coatings
Photoelectrons
Photoluminescence
Polymer Sciences
Sol-gel processes
Solid Mechanics
Wettability
X-ray spectroscopy
Zinc oxide
Zinc oxides
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:It is observed that the anchoring of LC molecules aligned on the ZnO film depends on the surface wettability. We demonstrate that the surface wettability of ZnO films fabricated by sol–gel process can be modified by annealing. The observations using the scanning electron microscope, photoluminescence and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy for ZnO films have shown that the annealing can modify both the morphologies and chemical compositions of ZnO films, which in turn produces influences on the surface wettability. The surface wettability of as-prepared ZnO film can be controlled from 102° to 60° (contact angle (CA) of water) as the annealing temperature increases from 190 to 250 °C. Our experimental results show that the pretilt angles of LCs on ZnO films can be modified over a wide range from 89.5° to 0.5° as the CA of water on the ZnO films changes from 102° to 60°.
ISSN:0022-2461
1573-4803
DOI:10.1007/s10853-017-1125-3