Abstract

Electro-optic (EO) properties of nonlinear optical polymers (NLPs), of key interest in any device application, are most widely measured with ellipsometric(1, 2) or interferometric methods.(3) The major drawbacks of these techniques are: a) with ellipsometry, the Pockels coefficients cannot be extracted independently, b) refractive indices must be obtained from other measurements, and c) these methods ignore multiple reflection effects in stratified samples. Waveguiding methods such as attenuated total reflection (ATR) measurements are capable of a complete linear optical and EO characterization of NLPs.(4) But the ATR prism complicates the angular scans, and waveguiding conditions over a large spectral range are difficult to fulfill with a single sample.

© 1997 Optical Society of America