Mild and in situ photo-crosslinking of anthracene-functionalized poly (aryl ether ketone) for enhancing temporal stability of organic NLO materials

Developing a mild and efficient method to simultaneously enhance poling efficiency and temporal stability is meaningful and challenging for organic second-order nonlinear optical materials. In this paper, a new poly (aryl ether ketone) and chromophores functionalized with anthracene groups have been designed and prepared. Poling and crosslinking process could be separated by the mild and photo-initiated cycloaddition of anthracene group. As the UV-Vis spectrum, DSC and TGA curves, the networks had formed by 30-min irradiation of the Lower-power UV light which led little decomposition of dipolar chromophores. The maximum electro-optic coefficient (r(33)) of these polymers is 28.5 pm V-1 (at 1.3 mu m), and the order parameter reaches 0.22. Moreover, the depolarization temperature of alpha peak, related to the dipole relaxation, has been increased to 129 degrees C after crosslinking, which is 17 degrees C higher than uncrosslinked ones. All these results indicated that the photo-crosslinking of anthracene exhibited promising potential for improving alignment stability and NLO activity at the same time.

Automated summary

Developing a mild and efficient method to enhance poling efficiency and temporal stability for organic second-order nonlinear optical materials is meaningful and challenging. In this paper, a new poly (aryl ether ketone) and chromophores functionalized with anthracene groups have been designed and prepared, and the results indicated promising potential for improving alignment stability and NLO activity at the same time through photo-crosslinking of anthracene.