Photoinduced effects in hybrid sol-gel materials

Hybrid silica-based sol-gel films containing Disperse Red 1 (DR1), carbazole units (CBZ) and 2,4,7-trinitro-9-fluorenone (TNF) at different concentrations show reversible photoinduced birefringence. Polarization sensitive holographic gratings have been produced and characterized. Dichroism measurements give information on the orientation mechanisms and on the aggregation of the dye molecules. The alignment of the DR1 molecules by corona poling is verified by second harmonic generation (SHG) and a moving grating technique is used to investigate an asymmetric energy exchange in a two-beam coupling experiment, typical of photorefractive gratings.