Electro-optic properties of novel azobenzene polymers

Abstract

Polymers containing azobenzene dyes or azobenzene lateral groups are of special interest for their application as optically active media, particularly, as polarization sensitive media for such applications: optical data storage, surface nanostructuration, photoswitching, alignment of liquid crystals, active optical elements etc. An intensive research was carried out previous years on synthesizis and investigation of the second order nonlinear optical response of azobenzene/polymer systems. The desirable properties of these materials are attributed to the highly efficient photoinduced trans-cis and vice versa isomerization of azobenzene moieties. This transformation is connected with the volume change of molecules, followed by an increase of their rotational mobility. The trans-cis izomerization process is exploited also in all optical poling of polymers and plays an important role in optical depoling. Generally these phenomena are induced by light with frequencies corresponding to one-photon absorption. They are possible also by multiphoton absorptions. In this paper we report the synthesis of side chain methacrylic polymers functionalized with azobenzene chromophores. A reversible change of thin film absorption is observed when illuminating it with monochromatic, linearly polarized light under the applied external DC field. The amount of change depends on the angle between the light polarization and the DC electric field direction.