Novel Electro-Optic Polyimide and Polyamide Side Chain and Main Chain Polymers

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in organic nonlinear optical (NLO) materials, because of their potential application in integrated electro-optical devices. A promising approach to the development of new second-order NLO-materials is that of poled polymers. The advantages of poled polymers are large susceptibilities, fast response times, easy processability, and high physical and mechanical stability, but their NLO properties are usually not stable, due to the thermal relaxation of the chromophore orientation.1 Different design strategies have been worked out to synthesize polymers with desirable NLO-properties. Typically the NLO chromophores have been incorporated by doping2 (guest-host systems) or attaching them covalently3 (side-chain systems) into amorphous or liquid crystalline polymers. To enhance the orientational stability of the chromophores, cross-linked polymers4 or polymers which incorporate the chromophores with their dipole moments head-to-tail in the main chain5 have been synthesized.