High-quality organic electro-optic single crystalline thin films for integrated optics based on configurationally locked polyene

We present a novel approach on organic nonlinear optical crystals based on configurationally locked polyene (CLP) nonlinear optical chromophores. To obtain a large molecular second-order nonlinearity the long conjugated polyene chromophores provide one of the most effective pathways for efficient charge derealization between donor and acceptor groups. The CLP chromophores consist of pi-conjugated hexatriene bridge between dialkylamino or methoxy electron donors and dicyanomethylidene electron acceptor. We investigated the crystal engineering of organic configurationally locked polyene (CLP) crystals by co-crystallization and tailor-made auxiliaries. This offers more design feasibilities as one or both constituent molecules can be modified to fit one another and to acquire the desirable macroscopic properties in the solid state.