Optical Storage Effect in Dye Doped Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystals

We report an accurate analysis of an optical storage effect observed in dye-doped PDLC films. Permanent diffraction gratings are produced using standard holographic techniques with different kind of PDLC samples. For all these samples the polymerisation process is completed before the writing procedure. The analysis of the experimental results brought us to distinguish the role of the PDLC components in the observed phenomenon and propose some hypothesis about the possible physical mechanisms at the basis of the storage effect.