Title :
Toward all-optical switching in azobenzene-containing polymers
Author :
Andrzej Miniewicz;Marta Ziemienczuk;Pawel Karpinski;Daniel L. Silva;E. Schab-Balcerzak
Author_Institution :
Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, Wroclaw University of Technology, Wybrzeze Wyspianskiego 27, 50-370, Poland
Abstract :
The photoinduced refractive index changes in polymeric and liquid crystalline materials containing photoisomerizable azo-dyes form a group of materials that could be exploited in optical switching. Depending on the type of linkage between the dye and the matrix and its physicochemical properties various magnitudes of refractive index changes An and response times ? are observed. Here, we describe few polymeric systems showing high photoinduced birefringence up to 0.1 and DNA-CTMA biopolymer doped with disperse red (DR1) or disperse orange (DO3) azo-dyes showing responses as fast as 1 ms. By incorporation of metallic nanoparticles (15 nm gold) into the liquid crystalline matrix doped with DO3 we observed an enhancement of molecular reorientation due to plasmonic coupling with an electromagnetic torque. The preliminary results of optical Kerr effect measurements in the mentioned above systems are presented and briefly analyzed.
Keywords :
"Refractive index","Optical polymers","Crystalline materials","Biomedical optical imaging","Nonlinear optics","Optical refraction","Optical variables control","Electromagnetic coupling","Liquid crystal polymers","Optical materials"
Conference_Titel :
ICTON Mediterranean Winter Conference,2009. ICTON-MW 2009. 3rd
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-5745-8
DOI :
10.1109/ICTONMW.2009.5385563