Azo-azulene derivatives for nonlinear optical applications

Organic materials are of high interest and are widely used for the development of new powerful and low dimensional technologies. They exhibit several advantages with respect to inorganic compounds such as large cubic and quadratic optical nonlinearities, flexibility, easy manufacturing and so on. Among them, some present abilities for photonic or nonlinear optical applications. Intensive researches have been performed these latest decades to synthesize highly efficient and optically active molecules because of the miniaturization of optoelectronic devices. Azo-azulene derivatives are an interesting class of organic molecules for potential applications in optoelectronics and optical data storage due to their polyfunctional properties. We discuss second and third order nonlinear optical properties of a series of azo-azulene compounds in solid state. Thin films were prepared by incorporating these molecules in a polymethylmetacrylate (PMMA) matrix and were investigated. Moreover, potential usage of these guest-host systems for optical data storage is also discussed.