High price and poor availability of good quality commercial Holographic Materials are two good reasons to discourage the hobbist to make holographic experiments. So that I decided to produce my own Silver Halide Emulsions, getting unexpected results in term of Optical Noise, Diffraction Efficiency and Shelf Life
overview of Handmade Holographic materials
During the last years I built a household holography laboratory where I carried out
a huge number of experiments on Methylen Blue Dichromated Gelatin (MBDCG) and
Silver Halide Gelatins (SHG). The succesfull achievements got from
extensive experimentation prompted me to
share the results.
Particular emphasis is given to the
research on homemade Silver Halide Emulsions because of its practicability for
holography pouposes. The quality of these Holographic Materials is nerby to
the most common commercial products such as Slavich or Ultimate.
The main features which make this homemade product a excellent replacement of
available commercial holographic materials
are:
- Ultrafine grain
size
- Low Optical
Noise
- High Diffraction
Efficiency
- Sensitivity @633nm
<2mJ/cm2 for Single Beam (Denisyuk)
- Shelf Life above 6
months
- Size up to 230 x
250 mm
On the other hand the large time required to make batches of
a minimum of 50 plates, couldn't allow homemade plates to be a
business.
While it is possible to find many information on MBDCG, for example in the paper written by prof. Jeff Blyth, only a few information are available on Holographic Silver Halide Materials, maybe this is due to industrial secrets held by the main Photographic Materials producers. Anyway for who wants to start its own experimentation, here is starting point.
