METHOD AND DEVICE OF MANUFACTURING ALIGNMENT LAYER, AND OPTICAL ELEMENT USING THE SAME

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To easily and highly precisely align a liquid crystal material when an alignment layer is manufactured, used for an optical element and the like used as a birefringence correcting element of an optical disk in an optical pickup and coming in contact with a surface layer of a liquid crystal to align the liquid crystal in a prescribed direction.

SOLUTION: When a resin layer 7 containing a photoreactive functional group aligned in a light incident direction is layered on a substrate 3 and a point light source 4 is turned on to align the photoreactive functional group, a portion of the resin layer except a direct under part of the point light source 4 and an outer peripheral side is irradiated with oblique light by using a light shielding member 5 having a ring-shaped aperture 5a and the outer peripheral side of the resin layer is irradiated with nearly parallel light by using a ring-shaped mirror 6. When thus formed alignment layer is brought into contact with a liquid crystal layer to align the liquid crystal, the liquid crystal can be radially extended nearly from an optical axis as a base point, can fall in a face direction in the vicinity of the optical axis and can be raised in a thickness direction as separated from the optical axis and the liquid crystal can be easily and highly accurately aligned so that birefringent anisotropy is canceled.

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