Nonlinear moiety-doped polymers with improved optical properties for photonic devices

An electro-optic polymer guest-host system has been constructed and demonstrated. The polymer host is a polyimide (PIQ2200) and the guest chromophores are dimethyl (or diethyl) amino alkyl sulfone stilbenes. The alkylated-NLO moieties as guest chromophores have been modified, yielding new alkylated-NLO moieties. The higher content of alkylated-NLO moieties, compared to unmodified NLO moieties, was doped into a polyimide host system due to the improved solubility of new alkylated-NLO moieties. To the 40 wt%, the new alkylated-NLO moiety has been completely dissolved in the preliminary experiment, leading to the increase of refractive index by 0.0016. These polyimide-based guest-host systems exhibited a significant improvement in the thermal stability at high temperatures exceeding 250°C. The electro-optic coefficient reported in the present study is 13 pm/V for the 40 wt% DASS-6-doped polymer system poled at the 135 V/μm. However, further increase up to 25 pm/V may easily be achieved by increasing the amount of guest moieties and/or the intensity of the poling field. This work presents new materials for photonic switching devices with low operating voltage.