Analysis of the diffusion processes in dry photopolymerizable holographic recording materials

Abstract

In recent years the interest shown in dry photopolymer films as holographic recording materials have increased dramatically. The main reasons for this are the special properties of these media, such as high diffraction efficiency, low noise, real-time processing and low cost. Moreover, these materials are an important option for displays, high density data storage, micro-optical elements and other information processing applications. In these materials the hologram formation mechanism has been broadly studied, and it has been proposed that the temporal behavior of the diffracted beams depends mainly on the diffusion processes. Thus, the spatial modulation of the refractive index and its evolution over time is the result of non-uniform polymerization and the diffusion of monomers. In this work an analysis of the proposed models and the effect of the diffusion coefficient on the behavior of polyvinylalcohol-acrylamide-based compositions is realized.