Abstract

In contrast with the limited variety in inorganic electrooptic crystals, an infinite series of different electrooptic polymeric materials can be formed, since these polymers may consist of arbitrarily combinations of, usually organic, building blocks. The chemical synthesist has a large freedom in his or her choice of these buidling blocks, the way how they are interconnected and the total number of building blocks forming a macromolecule or polymer chain. This property results in the possibility to individually tune several key characteristics of the material by changing just parts of the macromolecule. This advantage has become more and more attractive since computer automated molecular design has become a mature field. Presently, researchers can first calculate the properties of a novel molecular design, before the tedious process of the chemical synthesis commences. This has resulted in a much more efficient effort in the development of new polymeric materials, such as in the field of nonlinear optical polymers.

© 1993 Optical Society of America