Advances in Organic All‐Optical Photorefractive Materials

Organic all‐optical photorefractive (PR) materials will soon become an interesting topic owing to the convenient signal‐writing without the application of external electrical field and poling, even without any photosensitizer. In this paper, organic all‐optical PR materials synthesized in our laboratory have been systematically summarized including organic monolithic PR molecular glasses with a linear or hyperbranched chemical structure such as organic carbazole/triphenylamine‐based amorphous compounds, and PR polymers with a non‐conjugated main chain (NCMC) such as polymethacrylates, polyphosphazenes and polynorbornenes. Much progress has been made not only in the synthesis strategy of organic all‐optical materials but also in understanding the primary mechanism of all‐optical PR effect in organic materials. It is believed that the outcoming of organic all‐optical PR materials will broaden the application fields of organic PR materials.