Effects of inhibitor on shelf-life time of photopolymer for holographic data storage

Abstract

Photopolymer is a strong candidate of recording material for volumetric hologram due to high sensitivity and large refractive index modulation. Although many groups have conducted researches on photopolymer system to get better performance, there has been not any special research about shelf-life time. It was reported that many monomers appear to undergo a spontaneous polymerization in absence of catalysts. This inherent problem of monomer is able to cause disadvantageous polymerization of precursor before recording. In this report, we examine the effects of monomer stabilizer or inhibitor on shelf-life of photopolymer medium. The final aim of this study is to report the photopolymer system of enhanced shelf-life time only by inhibition of polymerization without light exposure. Holographic gratings were recorded in the photopolymer film by intersecting two mutually coherent beams with wavelength of 532nm and p-polarization.