Copoly[6,6′-bis(9-(2-ethylhexyl)carbazole-3-yl)/thieno-(2,5-b)thiophenylidenevinylene]-based photorefractive composite: A comparative study on conjugated and non-conjugated polymer systems

Photoconductivity and birefringence are two important factors that affect performances of photorefractive devices. Here, the optical properties of this composite based on copoly[6,6′-bis(9-(2-ethylhexyl)carbazole-3-yl)/thieno-(2,5-b)thiophenylidenevinylene] as photoconducting material, 2-[3-[(E)-2(piperidine)-1-ethenyl]-5,5-dimethyl]-2-cyclohexenyliden]malononitrile as nonlinear optical chromophore, butyl benzyl phthalate as plasticizer and C60 as photosensitizer, has been compared to those of the corresponding non-π-conjugated polymer composite. The 50-μm thick photorefractive composite showed a diffraction efficiency 37.2% at 50 V/μm, which corresponded to a Δn of 2.62 × 10−3. When we compare the speeds of the current and the non-conjugated analogue composites, the current composite has about a factor of seven larger speeds due to the π-conjugated polymer backbone. We also discuss and present simple explanation of the observed effect.