Patent ID: 6876417

Claim:
A method of making an alignment layer on a wall of a liquid crystal cell, comprising imparting a property to a layer of a material on the wall, said properly being that when liquid crystal molecules are placed on the layer they will adopt a preferred alignment, the method comprising exposing the layer of material to unpolarized or circularly polarized radiation from an oblique direction, wherein the property of the alignment layer imparts a preferred tilt as well as a preferred azimuthal alignment to such liquid crystal molecules, wherein multiple local zones of the layer of material are exposed to radiation, the oblique angle of the radiation being uniform within each local zone but different between two or more zones, by interposing a microelement array between the source of the radiation and the layer of material to generate locally different oblique radiations on the multiple zones in one radiation step, and such liquid crystal molecules are zonewise aligned.