High throughput technique for characterizing liquid crystal alignment in complex geometries

We present a high throughput technique for characterizing liquid crystal electro-optic devices. We show that the optical transmission as a function of incident light polarization for an untwisted nematic device doped with dichroic dye can be simulated as a birefringent slab with uniform tilt and azimuthal alignment angles. Although the actual liquid crystal alignment may be more complex, these slab angles provide the basis of a rapid assessment technique. Implementation of the experiment using machine vision allows many measurements to be made in parallel and so very high throughput characterization of devices is possible.