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We discuss the alignment of nematics and smectics on substrates where an obliquely evaporated thin film has been previously deposited. In the planar samples, the surface anchoring energy is substantially larger than with the traditional rubbing technique. We can also uniformly align the liquid crystals obliquely, in particular by coating the evaporated film by a surfactant.
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Urbach et al. (1974) studied this question.
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