Refractive indices of birefringent photopolymer resin using the Brewster angle method

Abstract

Photopolymers are known to change its properties upon exposure to light. One property is its birefringence, which is the presence of two refractive indices in a material. In our study, we obtained the indices of a birefringent photopolymer resin by obtaining the Brewster angle of the sample at the vertical and horizontal orientations. By impinging p-polarized light on the surface of the resin, we were able to obtain the Brewster angle and calculate the refractive indices for both the horizontal and vertical orientations of the material: 1.511±0.0009 and 1.528±0.0009 respectively. The birefringence was calculated to be 1.70 ± 0.127x10⁻² The order of magnitude for the birefringence of the photopolymer resin finds applications in multilayer mirror construction and optical storage.