<title>New crosslinkable polymers with second-order nonlinear optical chromophores in the main chain</title>

Abstract

We have developed a new class of main-chain second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) polymers using well-developed condensation polymerization methods. In these polymers, the NLO chromophore dipoles are expected to be randomly arranged along the polymer backbone (i.e., the dipoles can be head-to-tail, head-to-head, or tail-to-tail). For comparison, a side-chain polymer having virtually the same chromophore as a pendant has also been prepared. The effect of variation in polymer structure on the second-order NLO properties and the effect of crosslinking on the stability of poling-induced macroscopic order are studied. Our results demonstrate that the random main-chain, second-order NLO polymers can be efficiently poled, yielding (chi) (2) as high as 300 pm/V. Long-term temporal stability of the poling- induced order (e.g., no significant NLO decay is observed for more than 2000 hours) can be realized by crosslinking the polymer backbone.© (1993) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.