Effects of alignment layers on pretilt nagle generation and electrical characteristics in nematic liquid crystal(NLC) by using photo-alignment techniques on polyimide PI) surface with side chain were studied. The generated pretilt angle of the NLC on rubbed PI surface with 1-layer is almost the same as that with the 2-layers. However, the generated pretilt angle of the NLC on photo-induced PI surface with 2-layers is larger than that with the 1-layer. The different mechanism of pretilt generation in NLC was observed on the rubbing and photo-alignment method. Therefore, the pretilt angle of the NLC on photo-induced PI surface is attributed to surface roughness due to photo-dissociation on the polymer with UV light irradiation on PI surface. We observed the same characteristics of voltage-transmittance (V-T) and response time for 1- and 2-layers on PI surface. Consequently, we sugest that the VHR of photo-aligned TN-LCD is higher than that of the rubbing-aligned TN-LCD.