Optical reconfiguration of surface relief gratings on supramolecular polymer films using grating translation and superposition.

We demonstrate the optical erasure and amplification of surface relief gratings written on supramolecular azobenzene-polymer films. The reversible photomechanical response of azobenzene-polymer films enables surface reconfiguration through grating superposition, which is implemented through mechanical film translation and exposure in a laser interference pattern. Sinusoidal surface relief gratings could be photoerased and regenerated using laser exposures with interference patterns shifted by half a period. Gratings could also be amplified and their surface coverage extended through multiple translations and exposures at integer-period steps. We report the fabrication of a 2.0 × 2.0 mm 2 surface grating of amplitude 697 nm from an initial grating of 78 nm amplitude through raster scanning and reexposing using a step translation equal to 10 fringes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]