Second-Order Optical Nonlinearities of an Electrooptic Polymer Containing a Thiazole Ring and Its Use in Single-Mode Waveguide Fabrication

A new electrooptic (EO) polymer synthesized for optical waveguide devices contains a thiazole ring in a nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophore. The introduction of the thiazole ring results in a charge transfer (CT) band shift towards the near IR region, so this EO polymer has a large second-order nonlinearity even in the near IR region. Its d 33 and r 33 values at 1.3 µm are estimated to be 44 pm/V and 12 pm/V, respectively. Using this EO polymer as the core channel, we successfully fabricate single-mode waveguides by the reactive ion etching (RIE) technique.