From Photoalignment to Structured Light: Liquid Crystal Platforms for Beam Shaping and Complex Wavefronts

ABSTRACT Liquid crystal (LC) photoalignment and photopatterning provide versatile, non‐contact approaches for encoding spatially varying molecular orientation, enabling compact, flat, and reconfigurable optical elements for structured light generation. This review summarizes recent advances in photoalignment strategies and patterned LC architectures that directly tailor optical phase, polarization, and amplitude, therefore producing a wide range of structured beams and wavefronts. We cover multiple LC phases including nematic, chiral nematic, blue phase (BP), and ferroelectric nematic (N F ) systems. Emphasis is placed on the translation from photoaligned LC director patterns to core structured‐light functionalities, including geometric‐phase modulation, and vector beams (VBs), orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode generation, as well as beam steering, lattice formation and intensity‐profile shaping. By explicitly linking fabrication routes and patterning fidelity to structured light metrics, this review establishes a unified framework for the rational design of photoaligned LC photonic systems and identifies pathways toward scalable manufacturing. We further discuss emerging LC‐enabled opportunities for quantum structured light and quantum information processing, and outline promising research directions at the intersection of advanced LC materials and integrated photonics.