Holographic Recording Material Containing Poly-N-vinylcarbazole

A volume phase holographic recording material with high diffraction efficiency and high durability against humidity has been developed. The holographic material consists of Poly-N-vinylcarbazole (PVCz) as a base polymer, camphorquinone as an initiator and thioflavine-T as a sensitizer. This film is sensitive to argon ion laser light, and exposure energy of 500 mJ/cm2 is required to realize high diffraction efficiency. After recording a latent image of a fringe pattern by exposure, a hologram was developed by swelling and shrinking of the film with two sorts of solvent. The thickness of the hologram could be reduced to 2.5 μm, because the PVCz hologram has a large amplitude of the refractive index modulation related with the crystallinity modulation. The high diffraction efficiency coupled with the thin layer made an incident light angle wide enough to maintain a high diffraction efficiency around the Bragg angle.