Liquid Crystals: Controlled Planar Alignment of Discotic Liquid Crystals in Microchannels Made Using SU8 Photoresist (Adv. Funct. Mater. 48/2013)

An optical micrograph taken by R. J. Bushby and co‐workers using crossed polarizers shows a thin film of 1,4,8,11,15,18,22,25‐octaoctylphthalocyanine in its columnar rectangular liquid crystal phase at 100 °C. In such thin, open‐to‐the‐air films, the columns are aligned in‐plane but follow random sweeping lines. However, when open‐to‐the‐air films are confined within micrometer‐scale channels formed from SU8, all of the columns are aligned and point in the same direction, as shown on page 5997.