Novel poling and electro-optic measurement methods of cladded nonlinear-optical polymer films

We use high temperature liquid-contact poling as a method to pole efficiently cladded nonlinear optical polymer films. Poling voltage as high as 400 volts is applied to planar waveguides which have a nonlinear optical film of 1.2 im thick. The lack of a quick method to characterize the poled cladded nonlinear optical films inspires us to devise a new electrooptic measurement method. This method can determine r33 and r13 separately because it uses light of single polarization state to probe the nonlinear optical film. The interference between the modulated light and the unmodulated light in the reflected beam is used to extract electro-optic coefficients. Theoretical analysis of the relationship between the reflected light intensity and the electro-optically modulated signal is consistent with the experimental results. Formulae to calculate electro-optic coefficients are deduced. This method uses an even simpler experimental setup than that of the widely used ellipsometric method.