Polymers for electro-optical modulation

Second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of polymeric materials have been attracting a lot of attention, especially for such potential applications as fast waveguides electrooptic (EO) modulation and frequency-doubling devices. For these photonic applications, the performance of the NLO materials has to be optimized. This requires not only a fundamental knowledge of inter-relationship between their chemical and NLO properties, but new technologies competitive or superior to existing ones as well. This review focuses on the synthesis of NLO polymers including chromophore design, and the comparison among comprehensive EO polymer systems. Moreover, characterization and device fabrication of electrooptical polymer planar waveguides are also reported in this review.