Abstract

While there is already an overwhelming amount of literature on photorefractive oxide crystals, only few reports have been written on photorefractive crystals grown from aqueous solution. Recently, we reported on the nitroprusside Na₂[Fe(CN)₅NO]H₂O which exhibits remarkable photorefractive properties in the red and near-infrared spectral range: The light-induced refractive-index changes attain values up to 1 × 10⁻³(633 nm) and 5×10⁻⁴(1047 nm). Such high refractive-index changes are however, like in LiNbO₃ connected with strong holographic scattering. Because holographic gratings can also be written with orthogonal polarisation, also anisotropic holographic scattering phenomena can be observed.

© 1998 IEEE