Comparative study of photoinduced surface-relief-gratings on azo polymer and azo molecular glass films

Photoinduced surface-relief-gratings (SRGs) on azo polymer and azo molecular glass films, caused by trans–cis isomerization of azo chromophores, have attracted wide interest for their intriguing nature and many possible applications in recent years. Understanding the mechanical properties of SRGs at the nanoscale is critically important for elucidating their formation mechanism and exploring their applications. In this work, a representative azo polymer (BP-AZ-CA) and a typical azo molecular glass (IAC-4) were comparatively studied for the first time concerning their properties related to SRG formation through a variety of methods. The results indicate that when inscribing SRGs on the films, IAC-4 shows a much higher efficiency for forming SRGs relative to that of BP-AZ-CA. The overall average moduli of SRGs measured by nanomechanical mapping techniques are obviously smaller compared with the moduli of the corresponding films of both materials. The moduli at different regions of SRGs are periodically varied along the grating vector direction for both BP-AZ-CA and IAC-4 gratings. The moduli at the trough regions of SRGs are always larger than those of the crests, while the moduli at the hillsides are the smallest. Distinct from BP-AZ-CA, even the moduli at the trough regions of IAC-4 SRG are smaller compared with that of the original film, and the ratio between the trough and crest moduli is significantly larger for IAC-4. These results provide deep understanding of the SRG formation mechanism and reveal the clear distinction between these two types of glassy materials for their SRG-forming behavior, which are important for future applications.