Hologram recording in DuPont photopolymer films by use of pulse exposure

Reflection hologram recording in DuPont HRF-800X071-20 photopolymer films has been demonstrated by use of pulsed laser exposure with pulse lengths of 25 ns. An expected weak reflectance of the recorded mirror holograms could be significantly increased by preillumination. Although pulsed preillumination enhanced only the reflectance, continuous incoherent preillumination significantly increased both the diffraction efficiency (which reached similar to 80%) and the sensitivity (which reached an increase of similar to 100 times, thus approaching the sensitivity of cw recording). The results are compared with those for hologram recordings obtained with cw exposure under the same processing conditions. Spectral absorbance curves of recorded holograms are presented, and possible mechanisms of hologram formation are discussed. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.