Optical functionalism of azopolymers: Photoinduced orientation and re-orientation of dendrimer structures of different generations

We report on second order optical nonlinearity in E-O active polymer materials - dendrimer structures of three different generations - investigated by means of all-optical poling. Chromophores containing azo junction used for experiments were prepared as guest-host type system based on polycarbonate matrix spin-coated on a glass substrate. Molecular orientation and subsequent decay kinetics in two modes of reading beam performance, when reading (i) not permanent irradiated or (ii) permanent irradiated, were measured. Depending on the intensity of reading beam the decay for different structures was measured and analyzed. Experimental results show that read-out intensity determines faster decay of second harmonic signal, i. e., effective "washing-out" the polar orientation alignment of molecules. (C) 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim