Diffusionmodelofphotoaligninginazo-dyelayers-DanDing.PDFVIP

PHYSICAL REVIEW E 69, 061713 (2004) Diffusion model of photoaligning in azo-dye layers Vladimir Chigrinov, Sergey Pikin,* Andrey Verevochnikov, Vladimir Kozenkov, Maxim Khazimullin, Jacob Ho, Dan Ding Huang, and Hoi-Sing Kwok Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong (Received 13 January 2004; published 18 June 2004) The model of the rotational diffusion of the azo-dye molecules under the action of polarized uv light was used to explain the formation of the photoinduced order in azo-dye layers. We consider both the approxima- tions of negligible and strong molecular interaction during the process of the reorientation under the ?eld of a polarized light. We constructed an experimental setup, based on a photoelastic modulator, that allows accurate ? in situ measurements of the phase retardation of thin ?lm as a function of the exposure time texp and exposure ? 2? ?? ? power W W/cm . A good agreement with experiment was observed. Fitting the experimental curves texp for different power values W, we can estimate the coef?cient of rotational diffusion D, azo-dye order parameter ? ? S texp , and other parameters of the rotational diffusion model. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.69.061713 PACS number(s): 61.30.Hn, 61.30.Gd I. INTRODUCTION The pure azo-dye layers can also be used as photoaligning agents in liquid crystal display (LCD) cells [1–3,19,20]. The Recently, we have shown the possibility of obtaining ther