Azodyes for liquid crystal photoalignment in displays and diffraction optical elements

Photoalignment on azo dye films is a simple and efficient way to achieve anisotropic ordering of molecules, which is promising to achieve ultra-thin high-performance dichroic polarizers. Besides, the photoalignment technique shows a unique advantage on patterned alignment applications, and enables the realization of advanced optical elements such as liquid crystal (LC) Dammann grating, LC Fresnel lens, holographic polarizers and bifocal optical-vortex lens. © 2022 SPIE.