Optical second‐harmonic effect of sol–gel inorganic–organic nanocomposites

Second‐order nonlinear optically (NLO) active materials have promising technical applications in optoelectronic devices. A general problem in NLO‐active polymeric systems is the decay of orientational order with time. Results are presented which show that using inorganic–organic composite materials produced by the sol–gel process as a rigid matrix for oriented χ (2) chromophores (Figure) may provide a means of overcoming this problem. magnified image