Materials for Holographic Optical Elements.
Abstract:
An experimental program was conducted to develop a hologram recording material sensitive at 545 nm, suitable for producing high quality holographic optical elements on spherical plastic visor substrates. Emphasis was placed on dye sensitized dichromated gelatin. Two techniques were developed for preparing gelatin films a casting technique for basic experiments and a dip-coating technique for spherical plastic visors. Preliminary experiments developed several image measurements for evaluating recording materials. These experiments verified the use of the surface grating equation for calculating external reconstructed ray directions from thick holograms, compared theoretical and observed angular sensitivity for a standard dichromated gelatin film, and evaluated interferometric and Hartmann tests of asymmetric holograms to monitor film stability. Basic experiments on dye sensitized dichromated gelatin determined dye absorption and solubility in the presence of dichromate, studied sensitive as a function of wavelength, and optimized pre-exposure processing and development procedures. Modified author abstract