Abstract

It is now well-established that organic materials belonging to the paranitroanilinelike family have much larger optical nonlinearities than inorganic materials. N-(4-nitrophenyl)-N-methylaminoacetonitrile (NPAN) has revealed similar efficiency to that of the best nonlinear organics with excellent potential toward second-order nonlinear optical processes such as second-harmonic generation (SHG), parametric amplification, and oscillation. The absorption cutoff wavelength of NPAN crystals is ~500 nm. NPAN crystals belong to point group mm2. The charge transfer axis lies at an angle of ϴ = 58.6° with respect to the crystallographic symmetry axis.¹ This value is dose to the optimum value θ = 54.7° for efficient phase-matching.³

© 1992 Optical Society of America