Abstract: | Results of electron microscopic studies of crystal structures of a number of bis-benzylidene cyclohexanones are presented. It is shown that some of these compounds are efficient crystalline non-linear optically active (NLO) chromophores with second harmonic generation (SHG) properties. Appropriately functionalized chromophores of this type can be used as a polycondensation comonomer to produce partly crystalline main-chain NLO-active polymers. Electron diffraction crystal structural data, obtained for very small crystals, allowed us to get reasonable estimations of macroscopic crystal NLO-coefficients, relating quantum-chemically calculated molecular first hyperpolarizability components to crystal axes. |