A liquid crystal panel useful for a realtime holography exhibiting also very high exponential gain coecient is presented. We prepared nematic liquid crystal layer sandwiched between photoconducting polymeric layers (poly(N-vinylcarbazole)/trinitro¯uorene). The ®rst-order di€raction eciency measured in degenerate two-wave mixing exper-iment amounts to 44%. The most important feature of the presented panel is its ability to switch energy from beam to beam. In two-wave coupling experiment multiple orders of di€raction are present and a very high two-beam coupling gain ratio (12) and a net exponential gain coecient C ˆ 3700 cm À1 have been measured. This gain was achieved in samples biased by a dc external electric ®eld and tilted with respect to the beam incidence bisector at 15°. The time constants of grating formation and erasing in the studied system are functions of applied voltage and can be made as short as few milliseconds at favorable conditions. Ó 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.