Zero Spatial Frequency Limit : Method to Characterize Photopolymers as Optical Recording Material

Photopolymers are useful for different holographic applications such as holographic data storage or diffractive optical elements. However, due to the presence of two different phenomena, polymer formation and monomer diffusion, it is difficult to characterize each parameter independently. We propose a direct method based on zero spatial frequency recording, to eliminate the diffusion influence, and on interferometric techniques, both in transmission and in reflection, to obtain quantitative values of shrinkage, polymerization rate, polymer refractive index and relation between intensity and polymerization, and so forth, This method has been implemented in the Holography and Optical Processing Group from the University of Alicante to characterize different photopolymers. In this paper, we present a compilation of the results obtained with this method for different photopolymers and we compare their characteristics.