Tech: New material makes holographic read-write possible

[dracodraconis]

A new type of holographic display material has been developed that can be refreshed in minutes. The developers hope to be able to reduce the refresh rate to the 30 frames-per-second required for video. If they achieve this goal, holography could become a viable alternative to current 3D displays that often require the use of special glasses. LCD displays have also been developed to display video  information in 3D (there was one on display at the Electronic Imaging conference I attended last week... very cool but the image was distorted from some viewpoints). Moreover, they claim that the material can also be used storing large amounts of information. They use a photoreactive polymer to which they apply a 9000 volt charge during the writing process. Once the information is written, a 4000 volt charge is required to maintain the image.