Organic materials for nonlinear optics

TLDR

This review discusses nonlinear optical polymeric materials. The study investigates a novel diazo‑dye‑attached copolymer as a second‑order NLO material. The authors analyze its nonlinear optical behavior. The copolymer achieves a second‑order NLO coefficient of 1.0 × 10⁻⁶ esu, seven times that of LiNbO₃, a third‑order coefficient exceeding 10⁻¹⁰ esu, and an optical loss of about 2 dB/cm, making it promising for waveguide NLO devices.

Abstract

Abstract This review discusses nonlinear optical (NLO) polymeric materials. As an example of a second‐order NLO material, a novel copolymer with a diazo dye attached is investigated. The second‐order NLO coefficient χ (2) of the copolymer reaches 1.0 × 10 −6 esu, which is 7 times larger than that of LiNbO 3 . A third‐order NLO coefficient χ (3) larger than 10 −10 esu is obtained for polymers where NLO dyes are introduced into the polymer backbone. The optical transmission loss of these polymers is revealed to be around 2 dB/cm. As these polymers can be formed into channel waveguides using the photo‐bleaching technique, they show promise for use in NLO devices because of their processability, transparency and large optical nonlinearity.