Photorefractive Polymers and Their Applications in Photonics

The demand for holographic recording materials has been ever increasing for the past few decades. Photorefractive materials have been studied extensively as candidate recording media. They offer high index modulation with reversible recording that make them very attractive for applications such as threedimensional holographic displays, adaptive optics, optical data storage and medical optics. Recently, organic photorefractive composites have drawn significant attention due to their high performance, compositional flexibility and low cost associated with their fabrication, presenting an alternative to traditionally studied nonlinear crystals such as LiNbO3. In this article, we describe basic concepts of holography and summarize latest developments in photorefractive polymer research. Possible applications of photorefractive polymers are also reviewed.