Magnetic Field Alignment of Liquid Crystals for Fast Display Applications

A clean, contact‐free method for liquid‐crystal alignment using magnetic fields is reported. The method is simple and very robust, with a significantly smaller number of processing steps required than other existing methods. The electro‐optical response of these magnetically aligned cells is about ten times faster than that of traditional rubbed liquid‐crystal cells, with on and off switching times τ of 0.3 ms and 2.3 ms, respectively (see Figure).