Azobenzene – functionalized polyelectrolyte nanolayers as ultrafast optoacoustic transducers

We introduce azobenzene-functionalized polyelectrolyte multilayers as efficient, inexpensive optoacoustic transducers for hyper-sound strain waves in the GHz range. By picosecond transient reflectivity measurements we study the creation of nanoscale strain waves, their reflection from interfaces, damping by scattering from nanoparticles and propagation in soft and hard adjacent materials like polymer layers, quartz and mica. The amplitude of the generated strain ε∼ 5 × 10(-4) is calibrated by ultrafast X-ray diffraction.