Optical anisotropy behaviour of epoxy polymers containing azobenzene groups

R. FERNÁNDEZ; P. A. OYANGUREN; M. J. GALANTE; I. MONDRAGON

Praga, República Checa

Simposio; 47th Microsymposium Advanced Polymer Materials for Photonics and Electronics; 2007

Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

  Thermoset epoxy composites are most often used in high-performance applications because of their unique properties. Accordingly, the preparation of epoxy systems containing azobenzene moieties appears to be very promising, because of their potential applications in optical information storage, optical switching devices, diffractive optical elements and other areas. Radiation with linearly polarised 488 nm light from an Ar+ laser can induce the orientation of the azo units  through trans-cis-trans isomerization processes, which can give rise to photochromic and optical dichroic effects. In this work the optically induced anisotropy has been analyzed as a function of the azobenzene compound concentration, the environment in which the azobenzene chromophore exists, the laser light intensity and the film thickness. The variation of UV-visible absorbance for light polarized perpendicular and parallelly to the polarization direction of the exciting light has also been investigated.