Engineering of photorefractive polymers

Photorefractive polymers offer advantages such as their considerable flexibility in synthesis, doping, processing, and low cost. Furthermore, compared to their crystalline counterparts, they offer the possibility of improved value in the photorefractive index change figure-of-merit, owing to the small dc dielectric constant and reasonable linear electrooptic coefficient and refractive index. We have investigated both host-guest, e.g., photoconducting polymers like PVK:TNF doped with electrooptic molecules or electrooptic polyurethanes doped with charge transporting molecules like DEH and sensitizers like TNF and C60. We also have investigated single component polymer materials, where all the necessary functional components are covalently bonded on the same polyurethane backbone. Various trade-offs that exist in photorefractive polymers are examined