We present a study of the diffraction efficiencies of polarization holographic gratings recorded in thin films of the azopolymer PAZO (poly[1-[4-(3-carboxy-4-hydroxyphenylazo) benzenesulfonamido]-1,2-ethanediyl, sodium salt]). Two series of layers have been prepared using two different solvents – distilled water and methanol. The gratings are inscribed by two plain waves with orthogonal circular polarizations (left and right circular) from a He-Cd gas laser (442 nm) at recording angle 20°, corresponding to grating period 1.3 μm. Higher diffraction efficiency is obtained for the thin film samples spin-coated from the methanol solution for thicknesses below 600 nm. Diffraction efficiency higher than 27% was achieved, as well as surface relief height more than 500 nm.
Dynamic speckle analysis is a promising tool for inspection of speed of processes. It relies on highly sensitive of speckle phenomenon to micro-changes in the optical paths. The same phenomenon is a source of severe noise, which contaminates substantially the outcome of analysis when a pointwise processing is applied to correlated in time speckle patterns. We obtained improvement of quality of the two-dimensional activity map produced by the pointwise processing by illumination at two wavelengths in the red and green part of the spectrum and separate processing of the raw data acquired in the red and the green channels of a color camera used to capture the speckle patterns. Summation of the activity maps corresponding to the two channels results in narrower spread of fluctuations of the estimate chosen to describe the activity.
Non-destructive detection of physical or biological activity through statistical processing of speckle patterns on the
surface of diffusely reflecting objects is an area of active research. A lot of pointwise intensity-based algorithms have
been proposed over the recent years. Efficiency of these algorithms is deteriorated by the signal-dependent speckle data,
non-uniform illumination or varying reflectivity across the object, especially when the number of the acquired speckle
patterns is limited. Pointwise processing of a sequence of 2D images is also time-consuming. In this paper, we propose to
transform the acquired speckle images into binary patterns by using for a sign threshold the mean intensity value
estimated at each spatial point from the temporal sequence of intensities at this point. Activity is characterized by the 2D
distribution of a temporal polar correlation function estimated at a given time lag from the binary patterns. Processing of
synthetic and experimental data confirmed that the algorithm provided correct activity determination with the same
accuracy as the temporal normalized correlation function. It is efficient without the necessity to apply normalization at
non-uniform distribution of intensity in the illuminating laser beam and offers acceleration of computation.
Azopolymers are well known organic materials for polarization holographic recording due to the induced anisotropy under illumination with polarized light. They possess all the desirable characteristics of the known polarization-sensitive materials, as high sensitivity and reversibility, but excel them substantially in the magnitude of the photoinduced birefringence. This makes possible to record reversible polarization gratings with high diffraction efficiency.
In this paper results of experimental investigations on the reversibility properties of birefringence photoinduced in azopolymers are reported, depending on the conditions of subsequent optical and thermal treatment. Thin films of different polymers were prepared in order to examine the kinetics of multiple recording and erasure of birefringence in different types of azopolymers. The reversibility of the polarization recording has been studied using two different method of erasure – by increased temperature and on illumination with circularly polarized light.
Dynamic laser speckle analysis is non-destructive detection of physical or biological activity through statistical processing of speckle patterns on the surface of diffusely reflecting objects. This method is sensitive to microscopic changes of the surface over time and needs simple optical means. Advances in computers and 2D optical sensors forced development of pointwise algorithms. They rely on acquisition of a temporal sequence of correlated speckle images and generate activity data as a 2D spatial contour map of the estimate of a given statistical parameter. The most widely used pointwise estimates are the intensity-based estimates which compose each map entry from a time sequence of intensity values taken at one and the same pixel in the acquired speckle images. Accuracy of the pointwise approach is strongly affected by the signal-dependent nature of the speckle data when the spread of intensity fluctuations depends on the intensity itself. The latter leads to erroneous activity determination at non-uniform distribution of intensity in the laser beam for the non-normalized estimates. Normalization of the estimates, introduces errors. We propose to apply binarization to the acquired speckle images by comparing the intensity values in the temporal sequence for a given spatial point to the mean intensity value estimated for this point and to evaluate a polar correlation function. Efficiency of this new processing algorithm is checked both by simulation and experiment.
Azopolymers are one of the most efficient types of media for recording the polarization state of light. An essential optical parameter to characterize them is the value of the birefringence Δn induced on illumination with polarized light. Laser beam is used as a pump and the birefringence is commonly probed by another laser with wavelength, different from the pump one. However, data about the spectral behavior of Δn are given rarely.
In this work we present experimental data for the dynamics of spectra of birefringence during illumination with pump lasers with wavelengths varying from 355 nm to 514 nm i.e. from the peak of absorbance to the edge of the absorbance band of the azopolymer used. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of nanoparticles from zinc oxide (ZnO) with different concentrations, incorporated in the azopolymer. The azopolymer used for this study is the water soluble poly[1- [4-(3-carboxy-4-hydroxyphenylazo)benzenesulfonamido]-1,2-ethanediyl, sodium salt], shortly denoted as PAZO. As indicated by our experiments, thin films from this azopolymer can be used for polarization diffractive elements, operating in the entire visible range of the spectrum.
In this article we present a study of the photoinduced birefringence (Δn) in films of a water soluble azopolymer: poly[1- [4-(3-carboxy-4-hydroxyphenylazo)benzenesulfonamido]-1,2-ethanediyl, sodium salt] (PAZO). Varying the concentration of the azopolymer in the solution, films with wide range of thicknesses are obtained – from 50 to 2500 nm. The film thickness is determined with a Talystep precision profilometer. Birefringence is measured using a polarimetric setup with a recording laser at 473 nm and probe He-Ne laser at 633 nm. As shown experimentally, the maximal photoinduced birefringence (Δnmax) does not depend on the thickness and is of the order of 0.07 for all of the investigated samples. The recording time however considerably increases for films thicker than 500 nm.
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