Abstract:
The introduction of birefringent chromophores with ground-state dipole moments into a photoconductive polymer host has provided the design flexibility to improve both dynamic range and speed. From the diffraction efficiency and Kogelnik's theory of thick gratings, it exhibits a dominant response time of approximately 2 ms for the underlying index-modulation with an additional slow component of approximately 1 ms and may support applications requiring video-rates. The orientational mobility of the chromophores is not limiting the response of the composite and kiloherts-regime responses may be achievable with improved photoconductivity.