Azobenzene Supramolecular Side-Chain Polymer Films for Laser-Induced Surface Relief Gratings.pdf

Azobenzene-Containing Supramolecular Side-Chain Polymer Films for Laser-Induced Surface Relief Gratings Jian Gao, ? Yaning He, ? Fang Liu, ? Xi Zhang,* ,? Zhiqiang Wang, ? and Xiaogong Wang ? Key Lab of Organic Optoelectronics Molecular Engineering, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua UniVersity, Beijing 100084, P. R. China, and Laboratory for AdVanced Materials, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua UniVersity, Beijing 100084, P. R. China ReceiVed March 15, 2007. ReVised Manuscript ReceiVed June 4, 2007 In this article, we describe the fabrication of azobenzene-containing supramolecular side-chain polymer films based on hydrogen bonds, on which surface relief gratings can be laser-induced. The supramolecular polymer side-chain is formed by attaching different azobenzene-type compounds to poly(4-vinylpyridine) through hydrogen bonding, thus allowing for tuning the content and kind of the azobenzene derivatives easily and avoiding the tedious synthetic work. It is found that such an azobenzene-containing supramolecular side-chain polymer can form nice films by the spin-coating method for surface relief gratings, and moreover, a large surface modulation depth of 312 nm can be observed. We anticipate that this research provides a type of materials for surface relief gratings. In closing, we have provided a new approach for fabricating surface relief gratings employing hydrogen-bonded supramolecular side-chain azo polymers. Introduction Azobenzene-containing polymers are fascinating materials because of efficient photoisomerization and photoinduced anisotropy of the azobenzene groups. The incorporation of azo chromophores into the polymers based on covalent bonds or noncovalent bonds can introduce structural diversity and processible ability into the functional materials. Laser- induced surface relief gratings (SRGs) on azobenzene polymer films, first reported by Natansohn et al. and Tripathy et al. in 1995, 1 has aroused considerable attention since then. 2 The l