Electric field poled organic electro-optic materials: state of the art and future prospects.

Recent advances in polymeric electro-optic materials and device fabrication techniques have significantly increased the potential for incorporation of these materials and devices into modern high bandwidth (fiber and wireless) telecommunication, information processing, and radar systems Charge transfer π-electron chromophores characterized by molecular first hyperpolarizability (second order optical non-linearity) values approaching 3000×10
 –30
 esu have been synthesized Elucidation of the role of intermolecular electrostatic interactions in inhibiting the efficient translation of molecular optical non-linearity to macroscopic electro-optic activity has permitted systematic modification of materials to achieve electro-optic coefficients approaching 100 pm V
 –1
 Improvements in the optical loss of polymeric materials at wavelengths of 13 and 155 µm have been effected Mode matching of passive transmission and active electro-optic waveguides has been addressed, permitting a dramatic reduction in insertion loss The putative ability of polymeric electro-optic materials to be efficiently integrated with very large scale integration semiconductor electronic circuitry and with passive optical circuitry has been demonstrated Several devices of varying degrees of complexity have been fabricated and evaluated to operational frequencies as high as 150 GHz The operational stability of polymeric devices is very competitive with devices fabricated from lithium niobate and gallium arsenide

From molecules to opto-chips: organic electro-optic materials

Electro–optic (EO) modulators are typically made from inorganic materials such as LiNbO3, but replacing them with organic EO materials, that is, ones with optical properties that change in response to an electric field, could be a promising alternative because they offer large bandwidth, ease of processing and relatively low cost. Here we incorporate a doped, crosslinked organic EO polymer into hybrid polymer/sol–gel waveguide modulator devices with exceptional performance. The half-wave voltages of the resulting Mach–Zehnder (MZ) and phase modulators at 1550 nm are 1 V and 2.5 V, respectively. The unique properties of the sol–gel cladding materials used in the hybrid structure result in a 100% device poling efficiency, leading to respective in-device EO coefficients of 138 pm V–1 and 170 pm V–1 in the MZ and phase modulators. These results are the first to show in-device EO coefficients that are five to six times larger than those of the benchmark inorganic material.

Hybrid polymer/sol–gel waveguide modulators with exceptionally large electro–optic coefficients

Poly(1,6-heptadiyne)-Based Materials by Metathesis Polymerization.

Recent progress in second-order nonlinear optical polymers and dendrimers

A simple reflection technique for measuring the electro‐optic coefficient of nonlinear optical polymeric films is described. The technique is based on the polarization rotation of a laser beam due to the electro‐optic effect. It requires no waveguiding and can be used to measure polymeric films during, as well as after, the electrical poling process. The results are in excellent agreement with those obtained from the more conventional but much more time consuming waveguiding method.

H. T. Man

Papers

Simple reflection technique for measuring the electro‐optic coefficient of poled polymers