Polymerizable liquid crystal networks for semiconductor applications

Liquid crystalline (LC) self-assembly offers enormous potential for fabrication of electronic, optical, and electro-optical devices by cost-effective solution coatingmethods. Formation of electro-active LC molecules into desired two-dimensional arrays and three-dimensional networks (Broer et al., 1988, 1989) represents a very attractive opportunity for applications, such as broadband cholesteric polarizers (Broer et al., 1995), color filters (Lub et al., 2003), charge transport layers (Yoshimoto et al., 2002; O’Neill et al., 2003), polarized electroluminescent devices (Whitehead et al., 2000; Contoret et al., 2002), photovoltaics (Carrasco-Orozco et al., 2006), and organic fieldeffect transistors (FETs) (Katz et al., 1998; Sirringhaus et al., 2000b; Huisman et al., 2003; McCulloch et al., 2003, 2006, 2008; Shkunov et al., 2003, 2004; Mushrush et al., 2003).