Photoinduced submillimeter-wave amplitude diffraction grating in a semiconducting CdF2:Ga crystal

It is shown that exposure of an additively colored CdF2:Ga crystal with bistable DX centers that is slowly cooled to 150 K to blue-green light through a slotted mask produces a submillimeter-wave diffraction grating, which persists for a long time at temperatures of 160–240 K. It is also shown that the diffraction grating induced in a sample is an amplitude grating. The absorption of submillimeter waves in illuminated regions of the sample is associated with the conductivity due to the transition of impurity centers to a metastable donor state. In the n-i-n-i-type conducting structure obtained, the conductivity of n-type regions at 225 K amounts to σ ′ ≈ 0.24 Ω−1 cm−1.