Abstract

New nonlinear optical materials with unusual ancillary properties are crucial to major advances in many technological areas, such as optoelectronics, optical information processing, and integrated optics. Recent experimental results suggest that polymer-based organic materials may offer unique advantages in tailorability and performance over more traditional inorganics, especially in waveguide applications. We report recent results of our studies of two promising approaches to the construction of χ⁽²⁾ polymeric thin-film materials. In one approach glassy polymers with high glass transition temperatures are covalently functionalized with selected chromophores. Macroscopic noncentrosymmetry, necessary for the manifestation of a nonvanishing χ⁽²⁾, is achieved by electric-field poling to induce preferential chromophore alignment. Several polystyrene and poly(p-phenylene oxide) systems exhibiting d₃₃ values as high as 65 × 10⁻⁹ esu at λ = 1.064 μm have been studied. The temporal stability of these systems is greatly improved over that of simple guest-host analogs and can be further enhanced by physical aging and by effecting thermal cross-linking simultaneously with poling.

© 1991 Optical Society of America