Chromophores electrooptic applications

This chapter gives an overview of the origin of NLO effects and focuses on the design of chromophores for two current applications of technological interest poled polymer materials for electrooptic switching and two-photon absorption. 

For several decades, the fields of photoconducting (75) and purely electrooptic polymers (74) have been very active but had almost no direct overlap. With the development of photorefractive polymers in the early nineties, the knowledge of these two research areas could be combined and has led to a rapid improvement of the performance of existing photorefractive polymers. The photorefractive polymer composite DMNPAA PVK ECZ TNF (DMNPAA 2,5 -dimethyl-4-(p-nitrophenyl-azo)anisole PVK poly(N-vinylcarbazole) ECZ N-ethylcarbazole TNF 2,4,7-trinitrofluorenone) we developed recently (P) has reached a level of performance that competes with that of the best inorganic photorefractive crystals (77,72). With the recent progress achieved in the development of new chromophores for electro-optic applications (75), the efficiency of these new materials is expected to be significantly further improved. 

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