Photorefractive Materials, from Polymer to Hyper-Structured Molecule

Abstract

A series of amorphous polyphosphazenes containing carbazole-based multifunctional chromophores and two hyper-structured photorefractive molecular glasses with a cyclotriphosphazene core were synthesized. These photorefractive polymers and molecular glasses show low glass transition temperature (20-90oC) and can easily be fabricated into optically transparent films with long-term stability. Results of two-beam-coupling and four-wave-mixing experiments demonstrated that high gain coefficient and diffraction efficiency were achieved at zero electric field for samples fabricated with these materials.