SBIR Phase 2, Final Report on Contract DAAB07-87-C-F022 (RALCON Corp.)

We have progressed steadily in capability and capacity during this contract period. We are now able to deliver a wider range of holographic optics than before and have advanced the state of the art in the making of low spatial frequency volume holographic gratings. We have incidentally patented a technique for enhancing photopolymers and have made deep surface relief grating structures in photoresist, epoxy and plastic. We have developed new and novel ways to get gelatin to stick to plastic and have made three color reflectors on plastic substrates. We can now make complex optical interconnect HOEs and we made a possible useful anti aliasing filter for the near IR. Attempts at making some white light viewable reflection holograms of multiplexed maps resulted in a decision to abandon that method of display for the current format at least and a hologram of a range finder turned out less than spectacular also. We had many reorders for low frequency volume gratings so we must have done that best of all or else somebody at NVL broke a lot of glass. Few if any of the original goals of phase two were met, but they were not of particular interest to the NVL and were best abandoned. Money and time were spent on production equipment at times but prototyping or development work remains the main interest and function of this lab with small production runs only being accommodated.