Silver halide volume holograms on BB-640 plates: the influence of the developer in rehalogenating bleach techniques

Photographic emulsions are still widely used in the recording of phase holograms. Several techniques have been optimized in order to produce phase holograms on photographic emulsions showing high diffraction efficiencies and low levels of noise. Among these techniques, bleached processes are one of the most interesting as they involve a relatively small number of steps and produce holograms of high quality. Of particular interest is the method of fixation-free rehalogenating bleaching because the shrinkage of the emulsion is minimum. In this paper we will study the influence of the development step in the fixation-free bleaching process applied to BB-640 emulsion. We will show that the development influences the optimum concentration of potassium bromide in the bleach solution. We will also show that good results can be obtained by using BB-640 plates for a wide variety of developers and that the values of the diffraction efficiency reached are rather high, as high as 87% for holograms developed in CW-C2.This work was partially financed by the "Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología" of Spain under project CICYT Nº MAT2000-1361-C04-04