Second-order nonlinear optical properties and thermal stability of the amino-sulfone chromophore containing polymers

The second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of azo compounds containing amino-donor and sulfone-acceptor groups have been reported by several research groups.1 Their studies demonstrated that these amino-sulfone chromophores have a sizable nonlinearity and can be functionalized at both ends of the molecule for either polymerization or crosslinking. In this paper, we report our study of several side chain and main chain polymers which focused on anchoring both ends of the chromophores within a polymer matrix to improve the thermal stability of the molecular alignment. In particular, we report our study of two new classes of amino-sulfone chromophore containing polymers.