Versatile helical polymer films: Chiroptical inversion switching and memory with re-writable (RW) and write-once read-many (WORM) modes

Solid-state films of chiral polysilanes undergo an optical inversion (see Figure) above a helix-helix transition temperature, determined by the polymer molecular weight and by the thermal processing. These films could be used for re-writable or write-once, read-many data storage, depending on the molecular weight and the transition temperature.