Organic electro-optic polymer materials and organic-based hybrid electro-optic modulators

Abstract

High performance electro-optic modulator, as the key device of integrated ultra-wideband optical systems, have become the focus of research. Meanwhile, the organic-based hybrid electro-optic modulators, which make full use of the advantages of organic electro-optic (OEO) materials (e.g. high electro-optic coefficient, fast response speed, high bandwidth, easy processing/integration and low cost) have attracted considerable attention. In this paper, we introduce a series of high-performance OEO materials that exhibit good properties in electro-optic activity and thermal stability. In addition, the recent progress of organic-based hybrid electro-optic devices is reviewed, including photonic crystal-organic hybrid (PCOH), silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) and plasmonic-organic hybrid (POH) modulators. A high-performance integrated optical platform based on OEO materials is a promising solution for growing high speeds and low power consumption in compact sizes.

Energy and Power Requirements for Alteration of the Refractive Index

“…Then there are also EO organic polymers in which the Pockels coefficient can be on a scale of a hundred pm V −1 or more, [ 33 ] which can bring the VLIC energy density to $${{10}^3}{\mathrm{J c}}{{{\mathrm{m}}}^{ - 3}}$$ or even less. That can be understood by the fact that polymers typically have a low melting point, [ 34 ] i.e., the potential $${{U}_0}$$ in Figure 2a is small, but, hence increase in index change occurs at the expense of reduced stability, which so far prevented polymers from replacing lithium niobate in wide range of applications. The last thing that needs to be said is that the “photorefractive effect” [ 35 ] has the same VLIC energy density as EO effect density as modulation of index is caused by the electric field of trapped photoinduced carriers.…”

Optical Isolation by Temporal Modulation: Size, Frequency, and Power Constraints

“…The two are related as r ∼ χ (2) / n 4 .) For organic chromophores, Pockels coefficients are larger, on the order of hundreds of pm/V, leading to a much lower u 0 ∼ 0.5 × 10 3 J/cm 3 , that can be explained by the lower density of organic molecules compared to the density of valence electrons in crystals and also due to the low effective biding energy U 0 , with the latter resulting in the thermal instability of the organic matter, which largely prevented organic modulators from widespread practical applications, despite high Pockels and nonlinear coefficients. Another material with an extremely high Pockels coefficient of up to 900 pm/V is barium titanate (BaTiO 3 ). − This is due to operating close to the Curie temperature of ferroelectric transition when displacement of the lattice is easy to achieve (soft phonon mode).…”

Systematic Study on Nonlinear Optical Chromophores with Improved Electro-Optic Activity by Introducing 3,5-Bis(trifluoromethyl)benzene Derivative Isolation Groups into the Bridge

“…There are many kinds of materials for electro-optic modulators, such as III-V semiconductor (electrical absorption materials, e.g., GaAs, InP) [ 7 ], lithium niobite [ 8 , 9 , 10 ], 2D materials [ 11 ], and organic electro-optic (OEO) materials [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. Among them, only lithium niobate and organic EO polymer are based on the Pockels effect.…”