Reports the synthesis of fully functionalized polyurethane and polyimide-based polymers having charge transport units and nonlinear optical chromophores available in each repeat unit of the polymer. These polymers, when doped with charge generators, should exhibit photorefractive behavior.

This report describes our effort in the past three years on synthesis and characterization of novel photorefractive polymer system. Two major systems were developed, one of which combined the ionic transition metal complexes and a conjugated polymer backbone bearing NLO chromophores to manifest large photorefractive effect. Another is a molecular material containing oligothiophene and a nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophore. A large net optical gain (>200/cm) at a zero electric field was observed in the metal containing system. In the molecular system, a net optical gain of 83/cm and a diffraction efficiency of nearly 40% were obtained in a film made from this molecule under an applied field of 706 kv/cm. A fast response time of for the grating formation, 42 ms under 616 kv/cm, was observed.

A general, convergent approach to the synthesis of a series of stilbene- (via Heck coupling) and azo- (via Mills coupling) based donor-acceptor, second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophores is reported. The synthetic strategy allows the preparation of both acid- and base-reactive structures, yielding diamine functionalized chromophores for incorporation into polyimide backbones. Also presented is a simple method for the oxidation of electron-deficient phenyl hydroxylamines to the corresponding nitroso compounds in homogeneous media using tert-butyl hypochlorite. This oxidative procedure provides the aromatic nitroso compounds in high yields, even with substrates that produce the corresponding azoxy derivatives as byproducts under standard heterogeneous oxidation conditions.

Presents the most recent developments in second-order nonlinear optical polymers. Covers the most important technologies necessary to achieve commercially viable devices based on special polymeric materials with second-order nonlinear optical properties. Discusses important molecular design considerations, how to process the polymers into films, the stability of the films, their optical properties, and prototype devices that can be made from these films.