Writing and reading with the longitudinal component of light using carbazole-containing azopolymer thin films

Alexey Porfirev,Svetlana Khonina,Nikolay Ivliev,Andrew Forbes,Elena Achimova,Alexei Meshalkin

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-07440-9

Abstract

It is well known that azobenzene-containing polymers (azopolymers) are sensitive to the polarization orientation of the illuminating radiation, with the resulting photoisomerization inducing material transfer at both the meso- and macroscale. As a result, azopolymers are efficient and versatile photonic materials, for example, they are used for the fabrication of linear diffraction gratings, including subwavelength gratings, microlens arrays, and spectral filters. Here we propose to use carbazole-containing azopolymer thin films to directly visualize the longitudinal component of the incident laser beam, a crucial task for the realization of 3D structured light yet remaining experimentally challenging. We demonstrate the approach on both scalar and vectorial states of structured light, including higher-order and hybrid cylindrical vector beams. In addition to detection, our results confirm that carbazole-containing azopolymers are a powerful tool material engineering with the longitudinal component of the electric field, particularly to fabricate microstructures with unusual morphologies that differentiate from the total intensity distribution of the writing laser beam.

Highlights

It is well known that azobenzene-containing polymers are sensitive to the polarization orientation of the illuminating radiation, with the resulting photoisomerization inducing material transfer at both the meso- and macroscale
We propose to use carbazole-containing azopolymer thin films to directly visualize the longitudinal component of the incident laser beam, a crucial task for the realization of 3D structured light yet remaining experimentally challenging
Our results confirm that carbazole-containing azopolymers are a powerful tool material engineering with the longitudinal component of the electric field, to fabricate microstructures with unusual morphologies that differentiate from the total intensity distribution of the writing laser beam

Summary

Introduction

It is well known that azobenzene-containing polymers (azopolymers) are sensitive to the polarization orientation of the illuminating radiation, with the resulting photoisomerization inducing material transfer at both the meso- and macroscale. The possibility of controlling the multiple degrees of freedom of light, including the amplitude-phase distribution and polarization state, has gained traction of late, for what is referred to as structured light[1] This in turn has opened up the way for many unique techniques and devices exploiting this new found control, including overcoming the diffraction limit in imaging with stimulated emission depletion (STED) m icroscopy[2–4], optical trapping and tweezing to realize optically driven micro-rotors and micromechanical p ump[5,6], and enhanced materials processing with vectorial light[7,8] to name just a few. We provide the qualitative model describing the profiles of the microstructures shaped under the illumination of a structured laser beam with the predetermined intensity and polarization distribution and discuss the possible mechanism of their formation

Methods

Results

Conclusion