Room temperature optical image storage devices based on novel photo-responsive chiral azobenzene liquid crystal dopants

Abstract

A room temperature optical image storage device based on a novel kind of chiral azobenzene liquid crystal compound (Azo-CC) dopant was reported in this paper, which could realize room temperature photocatalytic phase transition when doping in host liquid crystal E7. With a comparation of the referential achiral compound (Azo-ACC), the chemical structure, liquid crystalline and photoresponsive properties of the compounds were characterized by 1H-NMR, POM and UV–vis, respectively. The result showed that the compound with chiral group (Azo-CC) exhibited better photoresponsive properties than the referential achiral compound (Azo-ACC), indicating the introduction of chiral group is the key factor to provide E7 host room temperature photosensitive properties, which could not only made the liquid crystal molecular reoriented but also could change the whole nematic host liquid crystal to helical-twisted matrix. In addition, to understand the optical-switching behavior into detail, the photoisomerization dynamics of the systems o was also analyzed.