Abstract. Recently, Bieringer et al. [1] reported on the optical properties of liquid-crystalline side-chain polymers. These photoaddressable systems showed light-induced modulations ��n of their refractive index of up to 0.06. We present similar materials and compare them with a novel ansatz reaching birefringence levels of up to 0.2 [2]. This was achieved by donoracceptor substitutions of the chromophores and by introducing a new type of second side chain. We discuss the different photophysical properties of the two materials under the point of view of potential applications.