Abstract

Conducting polymers are of interest for its application to novel electro-optical devices and ultrafast all-optical devices. Over the past few years it has become apparent that the electrical and optical properties are strongly influenced by their morphology and molecular organization. Although several groups have reported that the control of regularity and orientation in the polymetric structure leads to remarkable enhancements in the electrical properties [1], the enhancement in optical nonlinearity has not been reported. We measure the third-order nonlinearity of regioregular head-to-tail coupled poly(3-hexylthiophene) (HT-PHT) and regiorandom poly(3-hexylthiophene) (R-PHT) using degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM). we observe the enhancement of third-order optical nonlinearity around exciton resonance in HT-PHT.

© 1996 Optical Society of America