High-density optical storage and the three-dimension (3D) microstructures in the side-chain azobenzene polymer material were studied. Two interfering orthogonal (± 45° to the incident plane) linearly polarized laser beams from an Ar⁺ laser at 514.5 nm as recording beams intersected on the surface of the sample with an angle which could be adjusted to form the holographic gratings storage. And a He-Ne laser at 633nm was used for a reading beam. By rotating the sample, there were 20 sets of gratings stored on the same spot in a side-chain copolymer PGMAA-20 film. Utilizing the stable optical storage property of this material, a rectangular microstructure and a complicated double layers nesting six-pointed star microstructure were also inscribed in the samples by using the same simple two-wave couple (TWC) setup in regular recording sequence, including rotating the sample and adjusting the incident angle of the recording beams. In the recording process of the high-density multiple gratings structure with different periodicity and incident angle, we found that the recording order of gratings with different periodicity made a crucial effect on the final forming of the microstructures. The microstructures in the samples were shown by an optical phase contrast microscope (Nikon TE300). And the simulation results were in accordance with what we had observed through a microscope.

Date Published: 13 January 2005
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 5629, Lasers in Material Processing and Manufacturing II, (13 January 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.578195

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5629:
Lasers in Material Processing and Manufacturing II
ShuShen Deng; Akira Matsunawa; Y. Lawrence Yao; Minlin Zhong, Editor(s)