Large inverse relaxation of photoinduced birefringence in an azobenzene-containing ionic self-assembly complex

Photoinduced anisotropy and polarization holographic recording were investigated in an azobenzene-containing ionic self-assembly complex. The complex film was found to possess large photoinduced dichroism (D∼0.36) and photoinduced birefringence (Δn∼10−2). A noteworthy observation was that the photoinduced birefringence did not show any decay, but strongly increased after switching off the pump light at room temperature. The diffracted signals of the polarization holographic gratings, written by two orthogonally linear and circular polarized beams respectively, exhibited similar inverse relaxation behavior as the photoinduced birefringence after switching off the writing lights. A discussion about the mechanism accounting for the abnormal relaxation process of photoinduced birefringence is presented.