Within the last four years there has been considerable interest in the use of sidechain liquid-crystal polymers (LCP's) for optical storage applications. Laser-induced thermo-optic recording has been realised in side-chain LC polyacrylates'*2) and polysil~xanes~), and all the functions necessary for a fatigue-resistant erasable optical memory have been demonstrated in the latter case4*'). The motivation for using LCP's in this application is driven, in part, by the possibility of exploiting the processability of polymers and their readily available glassy phases, although other novel features unique to speciality polymers have also become evident". Although this rationale for experimenting with LCP storage media is perfectly sound, there is stiff competition from various low-molecular-weight LC storage media such as the well researched smectic A cyanobiphenyls') and the class of glassy nematic LC's recently described by Demus et a1.8s9).To date the literature on thermo-optic recording using LCP's has almost exclusively described systems wherein the active material is confined in traditional glass cavity cells; one exception is the coated cholesteric polysiloxane described by Ueno et allo). More recently Pins1 et al. ' I ) have elegantly demonstrated a photoinduced write-once recording mechanism on a doped cholesteric polysiloxane spin-coated onto a substrate. To the best of our knowledge there have been no reports of optical recording on LCP's in stand-alone film formats. Thus, one of the most technically significant advantages for using these alternative materials has not been realised.While the goals of a laser-addressed LCP-recording film embodied within the flexible optically transparent electrodes necessary to permit electrical access for selective and bulk-erase functions is an important one to pursue, any example of an LCP-recording system which actually demonstrated the use of polymer-film-forming properties is noteworthy. In this report we discuss preliminary results of laser-induced writing on an unsupported main-chain LCP film to produce irreversible (write-once) optical storage.
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