OPTICAL BEHAVIOR OF AZO MODIFIED EPOXY HOMOPOLYMERS

OROFINO, ANTONELA; SÁIZ LUCIANA; GALANTE M. JOSÉ; OYANGUREN PATRICIA

Los Cocos, Cordoba, Argentina

Simposio; V Argentine-Chilean Polymer Symposium"-"VIII Argentine Polymer Symposium" - "IX Chilean Symposium of Polymer Chemistry and Physical-Chemistry"; 2009

Polymeric materials incorporating azobenzene moieties have been extensively studied due to their potential technological applications, such as optical storage, optical switching, liquid crystal alignment and optical diffraction devices among many others (Carvalho, 2006). These applications are derived from the possibility of azobenzene units to undergo a trans-cis-trans photoisomerization. The mechanism of this process involves repeated trans-cis photoisomerization of azobenzene groups and thermal cis-trans relaxation, resulting in the alignment of azobenzene groups in the direction perpendicular to the polarization of the incident light. Materials that are suitable for such applications are required to display a high thermal and mechanical stability as well as photostability. It is also well known that epoxy networks are highly transparent and have excellent mechanical and thermal properties. In previous works epoxy-amine polymers having azo groups covalently bonded have been satisfactorily synthesized, characterized and their optical properties carefully analyzed (Fernández et al. 2008, Fernández et al., 2009). Based on that knowledge, the principal objective of this work is to synthesize and characterize epoxy homopolymers containing azo groups covalently linked that could exhibit optical anisotropy when are excited with polarized light.