Processing Techniques

This chapter discusses processing chemistry for silver halide materials. As a general principle, holography utilises the time‐honoured techniques for processing silver halide. In the processing of silver halide materials, the photo emulsions are used for holography resemble, to a great extent, those utilised in black and white photography, or lithographic film, the modern emulsions and comprise silver bromide grains which are significantly smaller than those in any other application. The emulsions therefore require special treatment, not least from the point of view of their tendency for solubility during the developing and bleaching processes. Holographic recording emulsions are, in effect, equivalent to black and white photographic emulsions and it is therefore very useful to consider the classical view of what is happening in the recording layer, notwithstanding the fact that we are dealing specifically with performance at the level of microscopic detail.