Nanoparticles-induced vertical alignment in liquid crystal cell

This letter reports that adding nanoparticles in the negative dielectric anisotropic liquid crystal (LC) cell can exhibit the properties of vertical alignment without using alignment layers. The electro-optical properties of this nanoparticles-induced vertical alignment in the LC cell are very similar to the conventional homeotropic LC cell with alignment layers. This technique can be used to fabricate a flexible LC display requiring a low temperature process.