Optical detection of organic vapors using gratings in photopolymers

This polymer films are known to interact with organic vapors via absorption or diffusion. In photosensitive polymers the surface properties as well as the free volume of the polymer may be changed by light exposure. In holographic gratings exposed and unexposed microregions are present next to each other. If both regions interact in a different way with the vapor molecules a change in the diffraction efficiency of the grating should occur as a function of the vapor concentration.For 2 different photopolymer systems we will investigate the use of holographic gratings for the optical vapor detection.