Abstract: | A new organic/inorganic hybrid nonlinear optical (NLO) material was developed by the sol-gel process of analkoxysilane dye with tetraethoxysilane. A NLO moiety based on 4-nitro-4'-hydroxy azobenzene was covalently bonded tothe triethoxysilane derivative, i.e. γ-isocyanatopropyl triethoxysilane. The preparation process and properties of the sol-gelderived NLO polymer were studied and characterized by SEM, FTIR, 1H-NMR, UV-Vis, DSC and second harmonicgeneration (SHG) measurement. The results indicated that the chemical bonding of the chromophores to the inorganic SiO2 networks induces low dipole alignment relaxation and preferable orientational stability.The SHG measurements also showed that the bonded polymer film containing 75 wt% of the akoxysilane dye has a high electro-optic coefficient(r33) of 7.1 pm/V at 1.1 μm wavelength,and exhibit good SHG stability,the r33 values can maintain about 92.7% of its initial value at room temperature for 90 days,and can maintain about 59.3% at 100℃ for 300 min. |