Light- and Neutron-Optical Properties of Holographic Transmission Gratings from Polymer-Ionic Liquid Composites with Submicron Grating Spacing

Abstract

We investigate the applicability of polymer-ionic liquid composites as optical elements for light, as well as for slow neutrons. The gratings are recorded using two-beam mixing and are characterized experimentally based on their diffraction properties. We produced a set of samples differing in their thickness, ranging from 10 μm−100 μm. We demonstrate that it is possible to prepare transmission gratings with a lattice constant of Λ = 480 nm, resulting in thick gratings for light, as well as neutrons. The presented samples show low optical losses in the Vis-UV spectrum and exhibit refractive index modulations of about 10 − 3 at λ = 543 nm. However, further improvements have to be made to obtain efficient neutron optical components.

Keywords

• polymer composites
• ionic liquids
• diffraction gratings
• neutron optics
• thick gratings
• holography