The Photorefractive Response of Zn and Mo Codoped LiNbO3 in the Visible Region

Liyun Xue,Ling Zhu,Jingjun Xu,Shahzad Saeed,Shaolin Chen,Hongde Liu,Dahuai Zheng,Ling Zhang,Yongfa Kong,Shiguo Liu,Xuying Wang,Tian Tian

doi:10.3390/cryst9050228

Abstract

We mainly investigated the effect of the valence state of photorefractive resistant elements on the photorefractive properties of codoped crystals, taking the Zn and Mo codoped LiNbO3 (LN:Mo,Zn) crystal as an example. Especially, the response time and photorefractive sensitivity of 7.2 mol% Zn and 0.5 mol% Mo codoped with LiNbO3 (LN:Mo,Zn7.2) crystal are 0.65 s and 4.35 cm/J at 442 nm, respectively. The photorefractive properties of the LN:Mo,Zn crystal are similar to the Mg and Mo codoped LiNbO3 crystal, which are better than the Zr and Mo codoped LiNbO3 crystal. The results show that the valence state of photorefractive resistant ions is an important factor for the photorefractive properties of codoped crystals and that the LN:Mo,Zn7.2 crystal is another potential material with fast response to holographic storage.

Highlights

Volume holographic storage is a technology that can store information at high density inside a crystal, which exploits the “inside” of the storage material, rather than only using its surface, resulting in a massive increase in the capacity of the data storage
The LN:Mo,Zn crystals were grown with different concentrations and measured about photorefractive properties
We find that its photorefractive properties are similar to those of LN:Mo,Mg crystals, but different from those of LN:Mo,Zr crystals, and the doping of zinc can shorten the response time and improve the photorefractive sensitivity of the LN:Mo,Zn crystal, especially 0.65 s and 4.35 cm/J at 442nm for the LN:Mo,Zn7.2 crystal

Summary

Introduction

Volume holographic storage is a technology that can store information at high density inside a crystal, which exploits the “inside” of the storage material, rather than only using its surface, resulting in a massive increase in the capacity of the data storage. Lithium niobate (LN) crystal is an essential material in many applications [1,2,3,4,5], such as surface acoustic wave, waveguides, volume holographic storage, piezoelectric, pyroelectric, and integrated optics [6,7,8,9]. The performance of volume holographic storage is prominent [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. The photorefractive performance of the LN crystal can be improved by using the doping technique

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion