PHOTOREFRACTIVE POLYMERS

The use of polymers as photorefractive materials offers many advantage s : flexibility in synthesis, doping, processing and low cost. The req uired functionalities responsible for photorefractivity, namely charge generation, transport, trapping and linear electrooptic effect are gi ven in the polymer with the addition of specific molecules or monomers . With the proper selection of the functional components, we have made host-guest polymers (eg. photoconducting polymers like PVK:TNF doped with electrooptic molecules), optimized to show net gain and fast resp onse at various laser lines in the visible part of the spectrum.