Newly designed organic/inorganic film for optical second-harmonic generation

In this paper we report the fabrication of organic/inorganic film for optical second-harmonic generation by a sol-gel method for the purpose of the improvement of thermal stability and chemical resistance. The film contains the azo dye Disperse Orange 3 protected by poly(vinylpyrrolidone) in a reticulation of silica gel, whose structure was developed by the spinodal decomposition and the gel-forming process as temperature increased. Corona-poling at elevated temperature could successively induce the optical second-harmonic nonlinearities. The dependence of temperature and field strength on the second-harmonic intensity was also investigated.