Bifunctional chromophore for photorefractive applications

Abstract

A bifunctional chromophore has been developed which serves as a charge transporting agent as well as a second-order nonlinear optical compound. The chromophore has been incorporated into an inert polymer to form a photorefractive material when doped with a photocharge generation sensitizer. The dependence of the four-wave mixing diffraction efficiency, holographic grating writing rate, and two-beam coupling gain on the chromophore concentration has been studied. The results confirm the photorefractive character of the composite.