Patent ID: 7714965

Claim:
A process for preparing an aligning substrate for liquid crystals, comprising the steps of: providing an aligning substrate comprising an aligning film; and bombarding at least a portion of the substrate with a plasma beam from a plasma beam source at an incident angle of greater than 0° to about 85° thereby inducing a surface anisotropy and producing an alignment direction on the bombarded portion of the aligning substrate, wherein 0° is a position of the beam normal to the substrate, wherein an azimuth angle has a reference axis that is a projection of the plasma beam on the aligning substrate in the first bombarding step and a zenithal angle is an angle between the alignment direction and the aligning substrate, wherein i) the plasma beam bombarded portion of the aligning substrate imparts to a liquid crystal the alignment direction having an azimuth angle φ of 70° to 110° and a zenithal angle θ of about 0°; and ii) the plasma beam bombardment includes a second bombarding step and after the first bombarding step wherein the substrate or plasma source is rotated so that in the second bombarding step, the direction of plasma irradiation is perpendicular to irradiation of the first bombarding step, wherein the bombarded portion of the alignment substrate imparts to a liquid crystal the alignment direction having an azimuth angle φ of 90° and a zenithal angle θ of 0° to 5°.