Photorefractive gratings in liquid crystals with polymer doped C/sub 60/ layers

Liquid crystals doped with dyes or with added photoconducting polymer layers show high two-beam coupling gain. This paper has demonstrated that efficient two-beam coupling can be observed with polyvinyl carbazole (PVK) doped with a photosensitiser, named fullerene C/sub 60/. Two-beam coupling gain and efficiency of the material structure are measured. While application of an electric field tends to affect the orientation of the bulk of the liquid crystal, the photosensitive layer, covering the surface of the cell, reacts quite strongly with the incident light. PVK:C/sub 60/ prove their suitability for coherent light amplification and patterning.