A Review on Sustainable Organic Materials for Optical Limiting Technology

Abstract

Materials with exceptional nonlinear optical properties are critical to the continuing development of photonic and electro-optical devices, such as those used in optical communications, networking, optical computation for signal processing and data storage equipments. Currently, there exists a wide range of inorganic non-linear optical materials with varied wavelengths, damage thresholds and optical characteristics. Most technologies are based on inorganic materials with the appropriate optical properties. Using inorganic materials has some major drawbacks. Primarily, inorganic materials used in optical systems are difficult and expensive to process. In addition, inorganic materials have a high dielectric constant, requiring larger poling voltages and often suffering from changes in the material’s refractive index. Finally, inorganic materials have a low electro-optic coefficient, which is less suitable for electro-optic modulation. The present best practice in Photonics technology is the usage of organic materials/dyes that exhibit exceptional nonlinear optical properties. These organic materials/dyes are easy to prepare in solution or solid form. The resulting organic material has a low dielectric constant, eliminating the need for poling while maintaining the refractive index. However, these organic materials have few of the drawbacks inherent in the processing of comparable inorganic materials like of intense light induced degradation or bleaching and aggregation at higher dye concentration. In order to overcome these drawbacks and for effective use of highly nonlinear dyes, the strategic idea for the next practice is doping the dye molecules in polymer matrix. This idea of dye-doped polymer material matrix may increase the concentration of absorptive or fluorescence centers as well as the opto-chemical and opto-physical stability. In this paper we have discussed the strategic advantages of dye-doped polymer nonlinear materials in comparison with organic and inorganic nonlinear materials for future photonics technology by considering an example of an organic dye 4-[4-(Dimethylamino)styryl]-1- docosyl pyridinium bromide, doped in a polymer matrix Polymethyl methacrylate methacrylic acid (PMMA-MA).

Keywords: Dye Doped Polymer Films, Organic Nonlinear Materials, Optical Limiting, Two Photon Absorption