Electrically Poled Vapor-Deposited Organic Glasses for Integrated Electro-Optics

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel method of creating stable, electrically-poled organic glass materials via vapor deposition for use in integrated electro-optic circuits, enabling high-quality, stable, and efficient optical components.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach to fabricating stable, electrically-poled organic electro-optic materials through vapor deposition and corona poling, suitable for nano-scale integrated photonics.

Findings

Achieved an electro-optic coefficient of 20 pm/V.

Demonstrated stable non-centrosymmetric order at room temperature.

Produced high optical quality organic glass with a glass transition around 80°C.

Abstract

We introduce electrically-poled small molecule assemblies that can serve as the active electro-optic material in nano-scale guided-wave circuits such as those of the silicon photonics platform. These monolithic organic materials can be vacuum-deposited to homogeneously fill nanometer-size integrated-optics structures, and electrically poled at higher temperatures to impart an orientational non-centrosymmetric order that remains stable at room temperature. An initial demonstration using the DDMEBT molecule and corona poling delivered a material with the required high optical quality, an effective glass transition temperature of the order of $\sim 80$ $^\circ$C, and an electro-optic coefficient of $20$~pm/V.