Processing of Holographic Hydrogels in Liquid Media: A Study by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography and Diffraction Efficiency

[EN] The storage of time-stable holographic gratings in hydrogel matrices when the material is immersed in aqueous media is a real challenge at present. The optimization of the storage stages of the holograms must be properly investigated to identify the most suitable development processes. For this reason, this work is focused on the study of the optimization of the washing stages of the hydrogels based on acrylamide and N,N'-methylenebis(acrylamide) once unslanted transmission holograms have been stored. High-performance liquid chromatography and UV-visible measurements have been employed in our system to analyze the composition of the washing solutions. PBST and DMSO:H2O are used as solvents in the washing stages. The diffraction efficiencies are measured during the washing stages and after the storing of the holograms during several days in PBST. Maximum diffraction efficiencies of 38 and 27.6% are reached when PBST and DMSO:H2O are employed, respectively, for the washing process. Holograms show temporal stability after being stored immersed in PBST at 4 degrees C for 4 days. This research was funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades, Spain, under project PID2019-106601RB-I00 and AdBiHol-PID2019-110713RB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by "ERDF A way of making Europe"; Generalitat Valenciana, Spain, under projects CDEIGENT/2018/024, GRISOLIAP/2019/143, PROMETEO/2021/006, PROMETEO/2020/094 and IDIFEDER/2021/014 (co-funded by European Union through the FEDER Program). M. I. Lucio acknowledges her Juan de la Cierva Incorporacion grant (IJC 2018-035355-I) funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. M. I. Lucio and A. Belendez acknowledge the Programa Propio para el fomento de la I + D + I del Vicerrectorado de Investigacion y Transferencia de Conocimiento of the Universidad de Alicante for the grant "Ayudas para estancias de personal investigador invitado" (INVA20-02). K. Berramdane thanks to the government of Algeria for her scholarship offered to develop her thesis in the Holography and Optical Processing Group at the University of Alicante (Spain). Berramdane, K.; Ramírez, MG.; Zezza, P.; Lucío, MI.; Bañuls Polo, M.; Maquieira Catala, A.; Morales-Vidal, M... (2022). Processing of Holographic Hydrogels in Liquid Media: A Study by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography and Diffraction Efficiency. Polymers. 14(10):1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym14102089