We focused on the synthesis and optical properties of new organic-inorganic hybrid materials containing azobenzene groups for rewritable optical recording media. Hybrid material (SGUR19-n's) design has the structure of azobenzene group with urethane bonds in the silica network. The structures of the synthesized monomers and precursors were confirmed by FTIR and H-1 NMR spectrophotometer. Also, we reported on the effects of the direction of the polarized beam, the intensity of the induced beam, and the structures of SGUR19-n's materials on the diffraction efficiency of SGUR19-n's films. It was revealed that SGUR19-n's films prepared by the sol-gel process have adequate writing-erasing-rewriting properties when used as a reversible optical storage material. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.