Electrical and optical studies of corona poled 4-hydroxy-4-nitroazobenzene doped polymethylmethacrylate films

Abstract

Guest-host polymeric systems with 4-hydroxy-4'-nitroazobenzene as guest and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) as host have been prepared by taking different concentrations of the guest and characterized by observing their electrical and optical behaviour. The prepared guest-host system has been found to have large band gap ~2.86 eV and transmission over visible range. Pure polymer (PMMA) was not found to show any observable electrical non-linearity whereas mixing of dye (guest) has shown remarkable effect on its non-linear electrical behaviour. Moreover, the model guest-host blend (4-hydroxy-4'-nitroazobenzene/PMMA) has been found to exhibit desired order of non-linearity by optimizing the concentration of guest, poling current and poling temperature.