Kinetics of surface relief gratings tailored by laser-induced photochemical deposition

We theoretically describe and experimentally explore the real-time formation of gratings induced by photochemical deposition in liquids. Considering the diffusion and the surface adsorption on the deposit of photochemically produced molecules, we show that the pattern induced (1) is not necessarily an exact replica of the light intensity distribution and (2) can become thick. By implementing experiments with chromate solutions photoactivated by two interfering continuous wave Ar+ laser waves, we validate the model by analyzing the temporal behavior of the first three harmonics of the induced grating. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.