EN
Hybrid organic/inorganic materials based on combination of polymers and inorganic nanoparticles (NP) attract considerable attention due to their advantageous electrical, optical, or mechanical properties. Recently it was reported that doping photopolymers with nanoparticles allows to achieve near 100% net diffraction efficiency in case of conventional holographic recording. Thus, we have synthesized novel organic/inorganic composite materials by incorporating MFI (Mordenite Framework Inverted) type zeolite nanoparticles in an amorphous side-chain azopolymer. A considerable improvement of the photoresponse in thin films of these composite materials has been observed compared to the non-doped samples - nearly 25% increase of the saturated value of the birefringence.Moreover the photoinduced birefringence is stable in time which allows these materials to be used as media for diffractive optical elements with high efficiency and unique polarization properties.