Laser-addressing Rewritable Optical Information Storage Based on Novel Electrothermo-Optic Effect of(Side-Chain Liquid Crystalline Copolymer/Liquid Crystals/Chiral Molecule/Dichroic Dye)Ternary Composite Systems

Abstract

This paper describes a laser-addressing rewritable optical information storage based on novel electrothermo-optic effect of(side-chain liquid crystalline copolymer. LCcoP/low molecular weight liquid crystals: LCs/chiral molecules/dichroic dye)ternary composite systems. The influence of LCcoP on mesomorphic characteristics and electrothermo-optic effects based on the S_A-N^*-S_A phase transitions for the ternary composite systems were investigated. An extremely sharp change in transmittance(98%-3%)was induced in a temperature range of about 1 K above the heat-induced S_A-N^* transition temperature for the ternary composite systems with the homeotropic alignment. In comparison with the conventional S_A LCs systems, the ternary composite systems exhibited a laser-addressing thermo-recording with higher contrast and stable memory effectover a wide temperature region. The thermo-recording could be achieved with only 2 mW He-Ne laser.