High-performance photorefractive polymer operating at 1550 nm with near-video-rate response time

The development of a high-performance photorefractive polymer composite operating at 1550 nm is reported. We show 40% internal diffraction efficiency with response time of 35 ms and a net gain of $20cm−1$ in four-wave mixing and two-beam coupling experiments, respectively. This is more than an order of magnitude improvement in the diffraction efficiency and net two beam coupling gain and two orders of magnitude in the response time than the previously reported photorefractive polymer operating at this technologically important wavelength. The improvement in photorefractive characteristics is accomplished by an enhanced orientation of the nonlinear optical chromophore in the present composite.