Surface Plasmon Resonance Investigations of Photoinduced Changes in Liquid Crystalline Azobenzene Polymer Langmuir-Blodgette Films

In this letter, we report a novel phenomenon of photoisomerization-induced changes in liquid crystalline azobenzene polymers P12 Langmuir-Blodgette monolayer deposited on gold film by irradiating the monolayer with UV(360nm) and blue (450nm) lights, which was investigated by surface plasmon resonance technique. It has been shown that it is possible to switch the refractive indices reversibly by irradiating these films with light of appropriate wavelength.