Polarization-Controlled Diffractions of Submicron Pillar Arrays of Azo Molecular Glass for Image Recording and Reconstruction

Recording and manipulating optical waves with functional structures are crucially important for many applications. Herein, the submicron pillar arrays of an azo molecular glass (IA-Chol) are explored to show functional synergy of a recording medium and a diffractive optical element. The image recording is achieved through the pillar deformation along the electric-field oscillation direction of incident light. When illuminated with a polarized beam, the reconstructed images appear in the first-order diffraction spots of the pillar array with the tailored intensity distributions depending on the states of polarization of the recording beam and the image reconstruction beam. This approach enables several images to be recorded in the adjacent zones of the same pillar array using lights with different polarization directions, and then the images are reconstructed separately or simultaneously upon the polarization directions of the illumination light. Furthermore, the topographic features of the pillar array after the recording are replicated by replica-molding to the surfaces of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) slices as negative replicas and transformed to surfaces of poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) films through hot-embossing. The PDMS and PMMA replicas are highly transparent in the visible light range and able to produce the reconstructed images with light in a wide-wavelength extent.