Abstract

For several years we have been developing polyimide-based electro-optic materials based on commercially available components. In 1992, we described a proof-of-principle all-polyimide triple stack Mach-Zehnder modulator using DCM (4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-methyl-6-(p-di-methylaminostyryl)-4H-pyran) in Amoco Ultradei 3112 polyimide as the active core layer with Amoco Ultradei 4212 polyimide cladding layers.¹ During the course of our work we found that some commercial preparations of DCM contained a significant amount of a less soluble, more thermally stable impurity which we identified as the bis condensation product arising from the synthesis of DCM itself.² This impurity, DAD, and several analogs were synthesized, and their physical and NLO properties were investigated.³ Figure 1 shows the synthetic scheme used for their preparation.

© 1995 Optical Society of America