Abstract
Photorefractivity arises from the effect of simultaneous photoconductivity and electro-optic response in a material. The photorefractivity in liquid crystal is mainly based on orientational birefringence and we have already clarified that the photorefractive properties were improved by adding the polymer to the photorefractive liquid crystals. In the present paper, we tried to clarify the reason by comparing the properties of the polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) with those of the polymer-dissolved liquid crystal composite (PDLCC). The diffraction efficiencies increased with increasing the polymer concentration for both cases and the photorefractive properties including the electric field dependence and response characteristics were strongly dependent on the morphology of the composites.
