“…Thermally and chemically stable polymers such as polyimides have been generally used as planar as well as vertical alignment materials. However, the polyimide-type alignment materials exhibit several drawbacks such as long process time, low yield, low processability, and high cost. ,, Without applying the conventional polyimide-based alignment layers, the LC alignment direction and the surface anchoring energy can be modified by directly introducing lecithins, silanes, or nanomaterials into the host NLC media. − Especially, the nanoparticle-induced vertical LC alignment layers are very attractive because of low driving voltage, memory effect, and frequency modulation response. − However, most nanoparticle-induced VA materials can generate serious problems because of poor interactions with NLC molecules and strong aggregations among themselves. As an example, by directly introducing 3 wt % pristine polyhedral oligomeric silsequioxane (POSS) nanoparticles in NLC host media, the automatic VA layer was constructed in the macroscopic area. − However, because of strong interactions among the pristine POSS nanoparticles, a lot of POSS clusters on the micrometer sizes were formed in the bulk NLC medium before the formation of monolayered VA layer on the substrates.…”