Abstract

The development of polymer materials exhibiting large second-order nonlinearities is an area of intense research activity. The goal of producing low cost and high performance photonic switching devices using such materials is an attractive one for telecommunications manufacturing. Incorporating nonlinear compounds into a glassy polymer matrix yields a versatile material that may be electrically poled to produce electrooptic properties. This paper reports on recent progress in the synthesis, alignment, and characterization of nonlinear polymers suitable for device demonstration. Important for the design and operation of photonic devices are the linear and nonlinear optical properties of materials. Because EO polymers resemble a distribution of dipoles in an embedding polymer, refractive index data can yield valuable information about a given class of compounds. After electric field poling, the induced birefringence of the polymer indicates the efficiency of the alignment process.

© 1989 Optical Society of America