Nitroprussides, a new group of materials for holographic information storage on the basis of metastable electronic states

Abstract

A new group of materials for holographic information storage is introduced. The storage process is based on the excitation of long living metastable electronic states. The measured efficiency in the write- and erase mode indicates the existence of mixed phase- and amplitude gratings in single crystals of Na 2[Fe(CN) 5NO]·2H 2O. The angle dependence of the efficiency determines an upper limit of the hologram thickness up to 75 μm. In the write mode ( λ=476.5 nm) the maximum of the diffraction efficiency reaches 0.65% with an energy flux of about 15 J/cm 2. In the erase mode ( λ=632.8 nm) the efficiency increases to 1.3% with an energy flux of 2 J/cm 2.