Kinetics of photoizomerization of DR1 molecules embedded in solid matrix by a dynamic holography method

Abstract

The dynamic holography method is applied to determine the response time for trans-cis-trans izomerization process in DR1 chromophore embedded in a solid polymer matrix. The experiments were performed on free standing films using a pulsed ps laser for grating writing and a cw laser for it reading. It is found that the writing process may be well described by a mono-exponential curve with a time constant below ms while the decay process is more complicated and can be approximated by a bi-exponential equation with two response times, significantly larger than for the writing process.