Holographic grating fabrication for wide angular bandwidth using polymer thin films

To increase the angular bandwidth of volume holographic grating, we fabricate holographic gratings based on grating multiplexing technique by using thin films of photopolymers and polymer dispersed liquid crystals. Experimental results confirm that the liquid crystal materials increase the refractive index modulation of the grating, enabling high diffraction efficiency with wide angular response compared to pure polymer materials. We observe that the fabricated holographic grating has near 80% of diffraction efficiency and about 18° of angular bandwidth, which can be further improved by modifying the liquid crystal/polymer mixtures and the grating multiplexing technique. The grating can be used to fabricate holographic waveguide structures for emerging applications in the near-eye display systems. This work has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.61575097, 21473093 and 11704201), and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City (No.17JCQNJC01600). E-mail:drliuhl@nankai.edu.cn