Optical component based on Langmuir-Blodgett layers

US5517350A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• Hoechst GmbH · DE

Inventors

• Ivan Cabrera · Dreieich, DE
• Uwe Falk · Könnern, DE
• Werner Hickel · Ludwigshafen, DE
• Donald Lupo · Frankfurt am Main, DE
• Andreas Mayer · Linz, AT
• Georg Pawlowski · Saitama, JP
• Ude Scheunemann · Bad Soden am Taunus, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Dec 29, 1994
• Grant date: May 14, 1996
• Expiry date: Dec 29, 2014

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G02F1/3616
• WIPO field: Optics
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

An optical component comprises an electromagnetic radiation-transparent polymeric medium having a second-order susceptibility of at least 10.sup.-9 electrostatic units where this polymeric medium comprises compounds having polar-aligned noncentrosymmetric molecular dipoles which have as structural element an electron acceptor which is bound to an electron donor via a conjugated .pi.-electron system, which makes possible an oscillation of the molecular dipole between a ground state having a first dipole moment and an electronically excited state having a second dipole moment different from the first, and the nonionic polymeric medium comprises an alternating arrangement of at least one Langmuir-Blodgett film each of at least two different nonionic polymers having nonlinear optical properties. Besides high mechanical and chemical stability the optical component of the invention has excellent nonlinear optical properties, for example frequency-doubling.