Enhancement of laser recording in gold/amorphous chalcogenide and gold/acrylate nanocomposite layers

Abstract Two types of amorphous materials with the same functional purpose – direct optical recording of optical amplitude–phase surface reliefs – were investigated with the aim to establish the influence of incorporated gold nanoparticles on the recording efficiency. It was shown that the laser recording of optical reliefs on the basis of photo-polymerization of the selected acrylates or on the basis of structural polymerization–destruction like processes in chalcogenides with photo-plastic effects can be enhanced in the presence of Au nanoparticles (AuNPs). The lateral mass-transport processes at the molecular and nanoparticle levels are initiated by the non-uniformly, periodically distributed recording optical fields and increase the resulting surface reliefs in these materials, which can be used as microstructured optical elements, holographic gratings.