Highly stable, functionalized polyimides for second order nonlinear optics

Abstract

This paper summarizes our research effort in developing polyimides functionalized with nonlinear optical chromophores for applications in second order nonlinear optical devices. In the past several years, we have developed several general synthetic approaches to these materials. Detailed physical characterization indicated that these materials are quite promising in stabilizing the dipole orientation. Large optical nonlinearity was observed in a few of the systems in which a NLO chromophore exhibiting large µβ value was incorporated. However, a synthetic challenge is to incorporate those NLO chromophores exhibiting better µβ values into polyimide backbones because of the sensitivity of these chromophores towards chemical manipulation. A possible solution by utilizing palladium catalyzed coupling reaction is discussed and an example presented.