Sensitive polyvinyl alcohol/acrylamide based photopolymer for single pulse holographic recording

Polyvinyl alcohol/acrylamide based photopolymer has been widely studied when applied to holographic data storage, but it has not been used in areas in which single-pulse exposure is needed. The dye concentration of a polyvinyl alcohol/acrylamide based photopolymer is optimized under single-pulse-recording condition (8ns pulse width and 80.9–88.3mJ/cm2 exposure energy) for the first time, which makes it suitable for transient events recording. The optimized photopolymer records a hologram of spark discharge under the condition of single pulse exposure, which successfully demonstrates the feasibility of our work. The angular selectivity of the grating recorded with best dye concentration is weaker than that with lower dye concentration. But the angular selectivity is still high enough to apply to any multiplexing technique. •Dye concentration of PVA/acrylamide based photopolymer was optimized on single pulse recording condition.•Increasing of sensitivity by enhancing dye concentration is accompanied by a little decay of angular selectivity.•High enough dye concentration blocks photopolymerization.•The moment of spark discharge was successfully caught by optimized photopolymer on condition of one pulse recording.