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Design of Amorphous Thin Films of Azobenzene Containing Ruthenium Acetylides for Optical Data Storage
Kichou N. Gherab, Rafik Gatri, Jean-Luc Fillaut, Jérôme Luc, Bouchta Sahraoui and Jacek Niziol

Azobenzene dyes form a class of molecules, which is currently widely investigated because of their optical properties, including nonlinear properties, formation of surface-relief gratings (SRGs) and their potential applications, particularly in optical information storage. We report the formation of amorphous thin films of ruthenium(II) σ-acetylide chromophores containing an azobenzene moiety in the main π -conjugated system. These organometallic based materials show valuable properties as innovative materials for optical data storage. The investigated azobenzene containing ruthenium(II) acetylides show noticeable processability. Formation of surface-relief gratings (SRGs), using a picosecond pulsed laser at 532 nm, resulted in instantaneous inscription, while the orientation of these azodyes remains unchanged for up to 8 months. On the other hand, a study of orientation of these push-pull chromophores by corona poling was carried out to observe the influence on the second-order linear properties of the resulting films and demonstrated a long term stable non centrosymmetric alignment of the chromophores within the poled films.

Keywords: Organometallics, metal acetylides, amorphous materials, surface-relief gratings, corona poling, nonlinear optics, picosecond pulsed laser.

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