A real-time poling approach for preparing second-order nonlinear optical polymer thin films

Abstract

A new real-time poling approach for preparing second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) polymer thin films is presented. The presented method may be conveniently applied to many polymer thin film systems without going through the complicated conventional synthesis and poling procedures. This method, which is proven in this work to be feasible experimentally, is done by simultaneously co-depositing a NLO active dye, disperse red 1 and two polyamide thin film forming monomers on a gold electrodes pre-patterned glass substrate while concurrently applying an electrical field for poling. A second harmonic generation (SHG) signal is detected from the resultant thin films at a very low poling field ranging from 0.01 to 0.1 MV/cm which increases in intensity as the poling field increases.