Planar alignment of Liquid Crystals on h-BN for Near-Eye Displays

Abstract

Liquid crystals alignment on 2D materials is known due to their intrinsic van der Waals interaction. Here, we demonstrate that direction of electric field can tune the alignment of liquid crystal adsorbed on 2D surface. Due to degeneracy of alignment liquid crystal on hexagonal surface, it prefers to align in three multiple states. We utilized this concept and control the alignment of grains of chemical vapor deposition grown boron nitride (h-BN) to control the incident light. It was demonstrated that electric field can reorient the direction of liquid crystal alignment on Zigzag and armchair edges of h-BN. The ab initio calculations confirmed the favorable adsorption configurations of liquid crystal molecule on hexagonal boron nitride surface. This concept provides a pathway towards dynamic high-quality pixels with low power consumption and could define a new avenue in near-eye displays.