Effect of film thickness on the performance of photopolymers as holographic recording materials

An important issue in developing applications for photopolymers in holography is the effect of film thickness on recording properties. Now it is possible to create these samples with a much wider range of thickness (d = 20-1400 mu m) than was previously available. We exploit these recent advances in photopolymer processing to systematically evaluate how the dynamic range of a photopolymer depends on its thickness. The results illustrate that sample performance increases linearly with thickness as predicted by standard models of volume holography. However, above a critical thickness sample performance degrades, and the angular response of recorded plane-wave holograms shows evidence of grating curvature. These distortions are likely the result of photopolymer shrinkage, which in thicker samples occurs in a nonuniform fashion. This problem limits the performance of these photopolymers and is likely to be an issue for any photopolymer that undergoes comparable polymerization shrinkage. (C) 2000 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 090.0090, 210.0210, 160.5470.