P.S. RAMANUJAM,¹ Fulvio ANDRUZZI² and Søren HVILSTED³

¹Optics and Fluid Dynamics Department, Risø ENational Laboratory, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark, ²CNR, Chemical Engineering Department, University of Pisa, Italy, ³Department of Solid State Physics, Risø ENational Laboratory, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark

(Accepted July 18, 1994)

Long-term, high resolution holographic storage has been achieved in side-chain liquid crystalline polyesters with high diffraction efficiency. The information can be completely erased by heating the film to about 80°C. The modular architecture of the polyesters permits a varition in the length of the main- and side-chains and the substituents of the azo chromophore. Each of these has a profound influence on the storage properties of the polyesters. In this article, we examine the influence of the length of the side-chains, the probe-beam-polarization dependence of the observed signal on the interface and the crystalline vs. amorphous nature of the films for optical storage.

Key words : optical storage, liquid-crystalline polyesters, holography