DLMS-Based Optical Memories

摘要

The objective of this program is to prove the feasibility of room-temperature,erasable DLMS-based optical memories. To achieve the room-temperature spectral hole burning using the dye-labeled polymer microspheres, several materials issues (high-precision polymer microsphere distributions, photo-reversible photochromic dyes, and dye-microsphere coupling) have been addressed. Over 30 azobenzene dyes have been synthesized to meet the criteria for erasable persistent spectral hole-burning. Among them, aminosilfoneazobenzenes shows reasonable kinetics for photo-induced conformational changes. Technology advances in polymer-microspheres give us excellent control over average microsphere size, the dispersion of microsphere sizes in a preparation, and the properties of microsphere composites. Two chemical schemes have been developed to properly label the high-precision microsphere distribution with the bi-stable chromophores. During the program period, we successfully demonstrated the room-temperature Write/Erase/Read operations in the frequency domain. Multiple spectral holes were burned into the sample and successfully retrieved. The erasure of the stored spectral information was also achieved by a pure optical activation. Furthermore, we demonstrated the capability of rewriting new spectral information onto the erased sample. (MM).