Stoichiometric LiNbO/sub 3/ for high-performance holographic data storage

Summary form only given. Recent development of digital holographic data storage shows its potential advantages such as high storage capacity, fast transfer rate, and short access time compared with currently available technologies. Iron doped congruent LiNbO/sub 3/ single crystals have been well studied as material for volume holographic memory applications because of their good mass productivity and excellent photorefractive properties. In this work, we have quantified the optical quality of various LiNbO/sub 3/ crystals via the diffraction efficiency, bit error rate (BER), and light scattering noise in a holographic digital storage system. Optical quality Fe-doped stoichiometric LiNbO/sub 3/:Fe crystals were grown from melt.