THE MEASUREMENT OF 2ND-HARMONIC GENERATION IN NOVEL FERROELECTRIC LIQUID-CRYSTAL MATERIALS

We present the analysis of experimental results on second-harmonic generation in a novel ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) material, omicron- nitroalkoxyphenyl biphenylcarboxylate 1, synthesized specifically for large nonlinear coefficients. All nonzero d(ij) coefficients have been measured, with the largest being d22 = 0.6 +/- 0.3 pm/V. Relative values of refractive indices are also given suggesting uniaxial optical properties with large birefringence (n(z) - n(x) almost-equal-to 0.20 at lambda = 1.064-mu-m). This material demonstrates the flexibility of FLC molecular synthesis to form thermodynamically stable macroscopically aligned materials for second-order nonlinear optics applications.