Reduced Dimensionality From Nanoengineering of Soft Matter Organic Electro-Optic Materials

The integration of new electro-optic (EO) materials into silicon photonic, plasmonic, and metamaterial device architectures has the potential to dramatically improve performance in computing, sensing, and information technologies. To engineer organic electro-optic materials capable of device integration for these applications, acentric chromophore order, photochemical stability, and high electro-optic activity must be achieved. Toward this goal, we have engineered a reduced lattice dimensionality effect into an organic EO chromophore material matrix by covalently incorporating coumarin ligands to the chromophore molecules. In conjunction with electric field poling, lattice dimensionality effects can be used to promote acentric chromophore order and a 2-3 fold increase in macroscopic electro-optic activity. These results are corroborated by theoretical modeling and measurements of viscoelastic properties, demonstrating that the coumarin moieties promote intermolecular cooperativity in the system.