A Side-Chain Dendronized Nonlinear Optical Polyimide with Large and Thermally Stable Electrooptic Activity

Organic second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) materi-als have received increasing interests due to their potential applications in high-speed electrooptic (E-O) devices with very broad bandwidth (up to 150 GHz) and low driving voltages (<1 V).1 In the pursuit of a new generation of highly efficient NLO polymers for device fabrications, we have recently developed a series of dendritic chromophores and chromophore-containing dendrimers that possess very interesting nanostructures and E-O activities. By controlling their size, shape, and molecular architecture, we have achieved dramatically enhanced poling efficiency in these materials.2-6 These encouraging results motivate us to extend the similar site-isolation principle to several commercially available linear polymers. We have incorporated chromophores