Photorefractive polymers - A status report

A photorefractive system is one which is simultaneously photoconductive and electrooptic. Diffraction gratings or holograms can be produced in a photorefractive material by the photogeneration, drift or diffusion and subsequent trapping of mobile charges. The grating is produced by the internal space charge field set-up by these charges which, via the electrooptic effect, produces an index of refraction grating. Until 1990 all photorefractive systems were inorganic crystals such as LiNbO,, BaTiO,, B,,SiO,, InP:Fe, GaAs, or multiple quantum well materials. In 1990, the first observation of the photorefractive effect in an organic material, a carefully grown, doped molecular crystal was described. This was followed in short time by the discovery of photorefractive polymers. The early photorefractive systems, polymeric and crystalline, were inefficient compared to inorganic systems but in recent years the efficiency and sensitivity of photorefractive polymers have become equal to inorganic crystals. This paper describes the origins of the photorefractive effect and the design, synthesis and characterization of photorefractive polymers. In addition an orientational enhancement of the photorefractive diffraction efficiency is discussed. This orientational enhancement does not occur in crystalline systems, since it relies on the ability of the optically nonlinear chromophores to be aligned not only by an externally applied field, but also by the sinusoidally varying space charge field produced during photorefractive grating formation.