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Journal of Modern Optics

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Peristrophic multiplexing studies in silver doped photopolymer film

V. Pramithaa; Rani Josephb; K. Sreekumarc; C. Sudha Karthaa a Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India b Department of PS & RT, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India c Department of Applied Chemistry, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India First published on: 02 July 2010

To cite this Article Pramitha, V. , Joseph, Rani , Sreekumar, K. and Kartha, C. Sudha(2010) 'Peristrophic multiplexing

studies in silver doped photopolymer film', Journal of Modern Optics, 57: 10, 908 913, First published on: 02 July 2010 (iFirst) To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09500340.2010.496538 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500340.2010.496538

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Journal of Modern Optics Vol. 57, No. 10, 10 June 2010, 908913

Peristrophic multiplexing studies in silver doped photopolymer film

V. Pramithaa, Rani Josephb, K. Sreekumarc and C. Sudha Karthaa*
Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India; bDepartment of PS & RT, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India; cDepartment of Applied Chemistry, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India (Received 10 March 2010; final version received 24 May 2010) The peristrophic multiplexing technique with rotation of the film in a plane normal to the bisector of the incident beams was employed for recording plane-wave transmission gratings at the same location of silver doped acrylamide photopolymer film. Both constant and variable exposure scheduling methods were adopted for storing gratings using a 632.8 nm HeNe laser. The diffraction efficiency (DE) and M number (M/#) obtained from both methods were compared to determine which method enabled the greatest number of gratings to be recorded with uniform diffraction efficiencies. By the variable exposure energy scheduling method, 30 nearly uniform plane wave gratings with M/# equal to 4.7, could be recorded in a 130 mm thick photopolymer layer. Keywords: photopolymers; peristrophic multiplexing; holography
a

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1. Introduction Storage requirements all over the world are mounting day by day, making data storage one of the biggest challenges in the expanding multimedia market. Holographic data storage (HDS) with high storage density, fast data transfer rate and short random access time is envisioned as one of the promising technologies that can efficiently meet this challenge. In the past few years, researchers have experimentally demonstrated data storage density as high as 500 Gbits/sq.in [1] and sustained optical data transfer rate as high as 10 Gbits/s [2] separately in different optical systems. These potentialities have been achieved through the page-oriented nature of the systems and also through the application of different multiplexing techniques. Developing suitable recording media with a large dynamic range is critical in achieving a practical HDS system and research is now focused on developing the optimum holographic recording medium [3]. The dynamic range is the number of holograms with a diffraction efficiency of 100% that can be stored in a material with a specific thickness. It is the storage capacity of a holographic material and is characterized by the parameter M/#. With the dynamic range, it is possible to know how many holograms can be stored in the material with specific diffraction efficiency, or what diffraction efficiency the holograms would have if a specific number of holograms were recorded in the material. Metal ion doped acrylamide photopolymers with excellent holographic characteristics such as
*Corresponding author. Email: csk@cusat.ac.in
ISSN 09500340 print/ISSN 13623044 online 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09500340.2010.496538 http://www.informaworld.com

high refractive index modulation, large dynamic range (M/#), high diffraction efficiency (DE), good light sensitivity, real-time image development, high optical quality and low cost are potential candidates for recording write-once read many (WORM) holographic memories [410]. To store numerous pages of data holographically, various multiplexing techniques such as angle, peristrophic (rotational), shift and wavelength multiplexing are commonly used [1119]. The number of holograms that can be multiplexed in a given holographic system is primarily a function of two parameters the systems bandwidth (either temporal or spatial frequency) and the materials dynamic range [15]. The angular bandwidth problem can be alleviated by making the film thicker, but the scattering increases rapidly with thickness in the recording materials. Peristrophic (Greek word for Rotation) multiplexing was introduced as a solution to the bandwidth limited capacity problem. With this method, the hologram is physically rotated, with the axis of rotation being perpendicular to the films surface every time a new hologram is stored. The rotation shifts the reconstructed image away from the detector; permitting a new hologram to be stored and viewed without interference, and it can also cause the stored hologram to become Bragg mismatched. Peristrophic multiplexing makes it possible to multiplex many holograms in thin films. Thin-film materials, such as DuPontTM HRF-150 photopolymer, have been developed with a relatively large dynamic range [15]. As the number of holograms recorded

Journal of Modern Optics in these films increases, the optimal utilization of the available dynamic range becomes particularly important since the diffraction efficiency scales as 1/M2, where M is the number of holograms multiplexed [16]. Peristrophic multiplexing can also be combined with other multiplexing techniques such as angle and wavelength multiplexing to increase the storage density and with spatial multiplexing to increase the storage capacity of the system. There are several reports of peristrophic multiplexing studies in photopolymer layers with different compositions and film thickness. Curtis et al. [15] recorded 295 holograms with average diffraction efficiency of $4 106 in 38 mm thick DuPontTM HRF-150 photopolymer film by combining peristrophic multiplexing with angle multiplexing. Peristrophic multiplexing permitted almost two orders of magnitude increase in the storage capacity of the DuPontTM photopolymer and changed the limiting factor from the angular bandwidth of the optical system to the dynamic range of the material. Dye-sensitized acrylamide-based photopolymer systems have recently attracted a great deal of attention because of their high diffraction efficiency (DE) and low cost. Sherif et al. [12] have reported an M/# of 3.6 while recording 30 gratings in 160 mm thick acrylamide-based photopolymer film. Recording multiple gratings in the same volume of the film entailed rotating the photopolymer film between recordings. Ortuno et al. [13] recorded nine holograms with uniform efficiency having an M/# of 3 using 900 mm thick polymer films. Elena Fernandez et al. [19] have developed 700 10 mm thick acrylamide photopolymer layer and peristrophically multiplexed 90 gratings which gave an M/# of 12. We have previously reported preliminary studies on peristrophic multiplexing in which 15 holographic gratings were stored in a silver doped photopolymer layer [10]. In order to fully exploit the dynamic range of the material, as many holograms as possible, need to be stored. Hence, in the present study, efforts were made to exploit the available dynamic range of the silver-doped films by recording more number of gratings using a peristrophic multiplexing technique with rotation of the sample normal to the recording media. In applications of multiplexed holography, it is very important to make the diffraction efficiency of all holograms uniform [16] and hence much emphasis has been put on equalizing the diffraction efficiency of the multiplexed gratings by using a proper exposure scheduling technique.

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Table 1. Concentration of the photopolymer constituents. Constituent PVA AA TEA MB AgNO3 Concentration 10% w/v 0.38 M 0.05 M 0.14 104M 0.5 104M

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Figure 1. Optical absorption spectrum of the unexposed film.

2. Methodology The photopolymer material used in the study consists of acrylamide (AA) as the polymerizable monomer;

methylene blue (MB) as the sensitizer dye; triethanolamine (TEA) as the radical generator; silver nitrate as the crosslinker and a binder of poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA). The role of various components and details of film fabrication are discussed in our previous paper [10]. Table 1 shows the concentrations of various constituents of the 130 mm thick (measured using Dektak 6 m stylus profiler) photopolymer film. The optical absorption spectrum of the film was recorded using a UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometer (JASCO-V-570). The film has good spectral sensitivity in the red region of the spectrum (Figure 1) and a He-Ne laser (Melles Griot) with emission at 632.8 nm was used for recording and reconstructing the gratings. The two-beam holographic recording setup (Figure 2) was used to record plane wave transmission gratings in the film. The laser beam was split into two using a beam-splitter and these beams were directed onto the film using front-silvered mirrors. These beams were expanded using spatial filters and collimated. The collimated laser beams were allowed to interfere in the polymer film from the same side. Path lengths of the beams were made equal. The exposure time was controlled by placing an electronic shutter in front of the laser. Gratings were recorded using constant and

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Figure 2. Geometry for recording transmission grating. Figure 4. Diffraction efficiency of 20 plane wave gratings recorded with a constant 1 mJ/cm2 exposure per grating.

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Figure 3. Peristrophic multiplexing scheme.

variable exposure energy scheduling schemes. The recorded gratings were reconstructed using a 632.8 nm He-Ne laser. The diffraction efficiency was calculated as the ratio of the diffracted beam intensity to the intensity of the incident beam. The intensity was measured by an optical power meter (Ophir PD200). For peristrophic multiplexing studies, the experimental setup is the same as in Figure 2, except that a rotation stage was added and the photopolymer film was mounted on the rotation stage. Figure 3 shows the geometry for peristrophic multiplexing. After each exposure, the recording material was rotated in a direction perpendicular to the plane of incidence. This rotation causes the reconstruction from the stored holographic grating to come out in a different direction, permitting a new grating to be recorded at the same location and viewed without interference, and it can cause the stored grating to become Bragg mismatched.

He-Ne laser with 1 mJ/cm2 incident exposure energy per grating (2.5 s exposure at 0.4 mW/cm2 total incident intensity). The recording beams had an incident angle of 20 with respect to the normal on the photopolymer surface and the beam intensity ratio was 1:1. Twenty plane wave gratings were recorded with an angular separation of 5 in the film by this method. This angle was chosen so that the first-order diffracted peak of each grating would not contribute to or detract from the diffraction efficiency of neighboring gratings. The stored holographic gratings were reconstructed using He-Ne laser (2 mW, 632.8 nm). The diffraction efficiency of 20 peristrophically multiplexed plane-wave gratings recorded with a uniform exposure schedule is shown in Figure 4. Recording with a constant exposure schedule resulted in non-uniform diffraction efficiency gratings. The diffraction efficiencies (DE) of the first recorded gratings were high, while the last gratings had very low DE values. The efficiency of the first grating was 16% while that of the 20th one was 2 103%. The mean DE was calculated using the expression DEm
M 1 X i M i1

3. Results and discussion 3.1. Constant exposure scheduling method In the constant exposure method, gratings were recorded in the photopolymer film using a 632.8 nm

where, i represents the maximum DE of each grating and M, the total number of multiplexed gratings. The value of DEm was approximately 3%. The maximum efficiency i was seen to decrease as the number of recorded gratings increases, which may be due to the consumption of the dynamic range of the photopolymer film as each new grating was recorded [13]. The recording behavior of the photopolymer can be best characterized by plotting the cumulative grating

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Figure 5. Cumulative grating strength as a function of exposure energy for 1 mJ/cm2 constant exposure.
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strength as a function of exposure energy. The curve shown in Figure 5 is obtained by integrating the square root of the diffraction efficiency of the peristrophically multiplexed gratings recorded with a 1 mJ/cm2 constant exposure schedule. From the figure, it can be seen that the cumulative grating strength grows quasilinearly with exposure energy and then saturates. The dynamic range (M/#) was calculated using the expression M=#
M X i1

Figure 6. Diffraction efficiency as a function of grating number for 20 gratings.

1=2 i

where i is the maximum diffraction efficiency of each recorded grating and the sum is over the M holographic gratings multiplexed in the same location of the film [20]. The dynamic range (M/#) used to record the gratings by constant exposure scheduling was equal to 2.7. It is the saturation value of the cumulative grating strength and can also be calculated from the plot of cumulative grating strength versus exposure energy (Figure 5). From multiplexing studies at constant exposure time, it was seen that this type of multiplexing will not result in uniform gratings, which is essential for holographic data storage. When the gratings are recorded in the photopolymer film, the monomer and dye are being consumed and therefore the material becomes less sensitive [13,19]. Hence, it is necessary to increase the exposure time for the last gratings so that they also attain the same diffraction efficiency as the first recorded gratings.

3.2. Variable exposure scheduling method Efforts were made to equalize the diffraction efficiency of the multiplexed gratings by adopting an exposure scheduling method designed to share all or part of

the available dynamic range of the recording material among the gratings to be multiplexed. In this case, gratings were also recorded at an angular separation of 5 and with a spatial frequency of 1080 lines/mm. The total intensity at the recording plate was maintained as 0.4 mW/cm2 throughout the recording process and the beam intensity ratio was 1:1. Exposure energy was increased in steps by increasing the exposure time while recording gratings. Sets of 2030 gratings were recorded in the film by adopting variable exposure scheduling methods. The diffraction efficiencies of the recorded gratings were determined by reconstructing the gratings by a 632.8 nm He-Ne laser. The variation of diffraction efficiency with grating number for 20 multiplexed gratings is shown in Figure 6. The exposure scheduling scheme used is shown in the inset. The range of DE was 2.9 to 6% and the average DE was 4.5%. The plot of cumulative grating strength as a function of exposure energy for 20 multiplexed gratings is shown in Figure 7. The dynamic range (M/#) used to record the gratings was obtained as 4.2 from Figure 7. The diffraction efficiency of 30 peristrophically multiplexed plane wave gratings recorded with a variable exposure schedule is shown in Figure 8. Recording with a variable exposure schedule resulted in nearly uniform gratings. The range of DE was 0.9 to 5.5% and the average DE was 2.7%. The curve in Figure 9 shows the variation of cumulative grating strength with exposure energy for 30 peristrophically multiplexed gratings recorded with a variable exposure schedule method. In this case also, the cumulative grating strength increased quasi-linearly with exposure energy and then saturated. This saturation value is

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Figure 7. Cumulative grating strength as a function of exposure energy for 20 gratings.

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Figure 9. Cumulative grating strength as a function of exposure energy for 30 gratings.

Table 2. Comparison of DE and M/#. No. of multiplexed gratings 20 30

Range of DE (%) 2.96 0.95.5

M/# 4.2 4.7

Figure 8. Diffraction efficiency as a function of grating number for 30 gratings.

the dynamic range (M/#) and was equal to 4.7. The range of diffraction efficiency and M/# values calculated from the corresponding plots is summarized in Table 2. In the case of a set of 20 gratings, the recorded gratings were found to be more uniform than the set of 30 multiplexed gratings. But the M/# value is larger for the set of 30 gratings because, as the number of recorded gratings increases, there will be maximum utilization of the available dynamic range. The variable exposure method resulted in a larger M/# value and more uniform gratings than constant exposure scheduling, which clearly indicates that the variable exposure energy scheduling makes better use of the dynamic range of the photopolymer material.

The M/# obtained while recording 30 gratings in our 130 mm thick photopolymer material is assumed to be larger than the earlier reported values for acrylamide-based compositions with similar layer thickness. Sherif et al. [12] has achieved M/# of 3.6 while recording 30 holograms in a 160 mm thick acrylamide-based photopolymer film with slightly different composition. From Table 2, it can be seen that the multiplexed gratings have high diffraction efficiency values. Since, typically, one can work with holographic diffraction efficiencies of the order of 106, we have sufficient dynamic range to record more gratings. It is expected that more uniform gratings can be multiplexed in the material by making use of the variable exposure method developed by Allen Pu et al. [16] and research work on this is in progress.

4. Conclusions Holographic transmission gratings could be peristrophically multiplexed in silver doped photopolymer media using a 632.8 nm He-Ne laser. Variable exposure scheduling resulted in a larger M/# value of 4.7 while recording 30 gratings in the 130 mm thick photopolymer layer. This clearly indicates that variable exposure energy scheduling makes better use of the

Journal of Modern Optics available dynamic range of the photopolymer material. The M/# value obtained for 30 gratings in this 130 mm thick acrylamide-based photopolymer layer is assumed to be larger than the reported values for multiplexing an equal number of gratings in acrylamide-based photopolymer materials with similar composition and layer thickness.

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Acknowledgement
The authors are grateful to Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) for providing financial support.

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