Abstract

Although tricyanovinylated thiophene derivatives have been demonstrated to possess large molecular nonlinearities, their use in practical electro-optic devices utilizing high temperature processing conditions is somewhat limited by the low thermal stability (T_d ≈ 250 °C) of the tricyanovinyl group. Furthermore, the tricyanovinyl group is very sensitive to many polar solvents which are commonly employed in the curing and processing of polyimide based electro-optic materials. For this reason, we modified some of the highly active tricyanovinyl derivatives with the objective of achieving tradeoffs among many useful properties such as thermal stability, molecular nonlinearity, and stability to solvent and acid-base environments.

© 1995 Optical Society of America