The thermo-stability of acrylate based holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystal(H\|PDLC) gratings has been evaluated with regard to their morphology

diffraction efficiency

remained almost unchanged up to Bragg angle and electro-optical tunable performance.These experimental results showed that the morphology

diffraction efficiency

Bragg angle and electrooptical tunable performance of two H\|PDLC gratings containing rigid rings in the polymer structure remained almost unchanged up to 200℃.The studies indicate that the chemical structure of the monomers plays an important role in the thermo-stability performance of H-PDLC gratings.Normally

a rigid molecular structure forms a hard polymer network which is very stable at high temperatures

subsequently

enhances the thermo-stability of H-PDLC gratings.Thermo-gravimetry (TG) was used to analyze the decomposition temperature of three kinds of polymer materials.The decomposition activation energies and the corresponding reaction orders of the polymers have been calculated by the Freeman-Carroll differential method.The tested results showed that the decomposition temperature

the decomposition activation energy and the corresponding reaction order of polymers which contained rigid ring structure were all higher than those of a polymer with flexible chain structure.In addition

the ring rigidity increases interactions between molecules and restricts the motion between them

thus enhances the thermostability.