Electro-optic properties of a bi-chromophore norbornene polymer brush system

Abstract

A selection of poly(norbornene-exo-dicarboximide) brush-type polymers decorated with a pendent azobenzene dye have been prepared for use as electro-optic (EO) hosts. These polymer brushes were employed as EO polymer hosts for a high molecular hyperpolarizability phenyl vinylene thiophene vinylene (FTC) chromophore guest. These polymer brushes contained methoxy or cyano azobenzene substituents, which were able to manipulate the π-electronic polarization, refractive index, and EO activity. The concentration of the azobenzene dye was increased from 6 to 38%, in order to find the optimum and to maximise the EO coefficient. The refractive index of the mixtures could also be tuned by changing the azobenzene content. Ultimately an EO coefficient of nearly 95 pm/V could be realized using a methoxy substituted azobenzene brush at a concentration of 25% with an added FTC chromophore.

Dye-functionalized polymers via ring opening metathesis polymerization: principal routes and applications

“…A wide range of suitable monomers has been copolymerized comprising (hetero)polyaromatic compounds [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33], and more sophisticated functionalities like conjugated oligomers [34][35][36][37][38][39], triphenylmethane [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47], azo [48][49][50][51][52], or polymethine [53][54][55][56][57] dyes. Even transition metal coordination compounds of aluminum [58,59], iron [60], zinc [61][62][63], ruthenium [64, 65], europium …”

“…As opposed to radical polymerization techniques, ROMP is a facile way to incorporate these units into polymers and therefore, a number of polynorbornenes with azo dyes (5) have been synthesized [48][49][50][51][52]. In Fig.…”

“…By attaching different substituents to the azobenzene moieties (methoxy or cyano groups), the authors were able to improve p-electronic polarization and the EO coefficient which is a measure for the change in refractive index upon applying an electric field [49].…”

Demonstration of an optical phased array using electro-optic polymer phase shifters

“…In the calculation, we estimated the refractive indices of an EO polymer core and a polymer cladding to be 1.62 and 1.53, respectively, in reference to a previous study. 17) Then we obtained an effective width of 3.8 µm for the EO polymer waveguide in Fig. 1.…”

“…An OPA based on electro-optic (EO) effects is largely unaffected by temperature changes and is promising for several applications. [11][12][13][14] Recently, EO polymers have been investigated owing to their ultrafast response to external voltage, [15][16][17] and ultrafast phase modulation, mainly aimed at network switching devices, has been reported. [18][19][20] The number of differentiable optical beams can be increased by the high-speed beam scanning of an ultrafast OPA, and thus the spatiotemporal resolution of imaging and display devices could be markedly improved.…”