Recent Advances in Organic Nonlinear Optics and Photonics

Savas Tay, University of Arizona

Organic and hybrid (organic/inorganic) material systems combine high performance, functional flexibility and ease of processing, which makes them very attractive for photonic and optoelectronic applications. Recently, we have developed new organic based optical materials and devices that resulted in important advances for several technologies. Photorefractive polymers with superior properties such as reversible recording, fast response time, high diffraction efficiency, long storage time and large size (6x4 inches) were developed, and were used for demonstrating the first updateable holographic 3-D display, capable of displaying large format 3-D images every few minutes.1 Photorefractive polymers sensitized at 1550 nm using two-photon absorption were developed2-3 and investigated as phase conjugating adaptive optical elements for free-space optical communication systems. Conducting polymers doped with semiconductor nanoparticles and nonlinear optical chromophores were combined with 2-D photonic crystals to achieve tunable photonic devices.4 Thermally powered, plasmonic mid-IR (2-10 µm) emitters were developed5 using nano-amorphous diamond-like carbon, a material that exhibits excellent thermal and mechanical stability with tunable electrical and optical properties. The control of surface plasmons by periodic surface patterning results in narrow-band (Δ~0.5 µm) emission from these devices, which may lead to compact and low cost mid-IR radiation sources suitable for gas sensing and spectroscopy of chemicals and biological materials.

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