Humidity testing of bleached holograms.

One of the proposed storage media for semipermanent optical stores is an array of bleached holograms fabricated on photographic plates. If a store utilizing this medium is to be operated in a field environment, the effect of humidity variation requires consideration. In this study holograms were made using either Burckhardt's potassium ferricyanide or Russo and Sottini's modified R-10 type bleach on Kodak 649F and Agfa 10E70 plates. Diffraction efficiency was measured as a function of relative humidity over the range 30-98%. For holograms fabricated and tested as described above it was found that relative humidity values above 75% caused a permanent loss in diffraction efficiency for potassium ferricyanide bleached plates; humidity above 90% produced a temporary loss in R-10 bleached plates.