Nonlinear and Electro-Optic Organic Devices

Abstract

Organic and polymeric materials have emerged in recent years as promising candidates for advanced device and system applications. This interest has arisen from the promise of extraordinary optical, structural, and mechanical properties of certain organic materials, and from the fundamental success of molecular design performed to create new kinds of materials⁽¹⁾. From an optical standpoint, organics offer temporal responses ranging over fifteen orders of magnitude, including large nonresonant electronic nonlinearities (fsec-psec), thermal and motional nonlinearities (nsec-msec), configurational and orientational nonlinearities (μsec-sec), and photochemical nonlinearities (psec-sec). Additionally, organic and polymeric materials can exhibit high optical damage thresholds, broad transparency ranges, and can be polished or formed to high-optical quality surfaces. Structurally, materials can be made as thin or thick films, bulk crystals, or liquid and solid solutions, and can be formed into layered film structures, with molecular engineering providing different optical properties from layer to layer. Mechanically, the materials can be strong and resistant to radiation, shock, and heat. When coupled with low refractive indices and D.C. dielectric constants, the collective properties of these extraordinary materials show great promise towards improving the performance of existing electro-optic and nonlinear optical devices, as well as allowing new kinds of device architectures to be envisioned.