Sol-gel processed novel multicomponent inorganic oxide: organic polymer composites for nonlinear optics

Abstract

Sol-gel processing has been used to prepare a new class of multicomponent inorganic oxide:organic polymer composites which show great promise for both second- and third-order nonlinear optics. Special processing techniques have permitted the preparation of SiO2/TiO2/organic polymer composites in which the relative composition can be judiciously varied to select the linear refractive index for applications in integrated optics. Furthermore, this composite has been doped with both inorganic and organic dopants. The composite film doped with paranitroaniline (PNA) has been successfully poled. Both second-harmonic generation and electro-optic modulation have been achieved in such a poled four-component SiO2/TiO2/Polymer/PNA composite. For third-order nonlinear optics, composites of SiO2, V2O5 with poly-p-phenylene vinylene and the derivatives have been prepared. Femtosecond degenerate four-wave-mixing studies have been conducted on such third-order materials.© (1991) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.