title: Electro-optic single-crystalline organic waveguides and nanowires grown from the melt.
abstract: Organic nonlinear optical materials have proven to possess high and extremely fast nonlinearities compared to conventional inorganic crystals, allowing for sub-1-V driving voltages and modulation bandwidths of over 100 GHz. Compared to more widely studied poled electro-optic polymers, organic electro-optic crystals exhibit orders of magnitude better thermal and photochemical stability. The lack of available structuring techniques for organic crystals has been the major drawback for exploring their potential for photonic structures. Here we present a new approach to fabricate high-quality electro-optic single crystal waveguides and nanowires of configurationally locked polyene DAT2 (2-(3-(2-(4-dimethylaminophenyl)vinyl)-5,5-dimethylcyclohex-2-enylidene)malononitrile). The high-index-contrast waveguides (delta(n) = 0.54 +/- 0.04) are grown from the melt between two anodically bonded borosilicate glass wafers, which are structured and equipped with electrodes prior to bonding. Electro-optic phase modulation is demonstrated for the first time in the non-centrosymmetric DAT2 single crystalline channel waveguides at a wavelength of 1.55 microm. We also show that this technique in combination with DAT2 material allows for the fabrication of single-crystalline nanostructures inside large-area devices with crystal thicknesses below 30 nm and lengths of above 7 mm.
authors.affiliation: Nonlinear Optics Laboratory, Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. nlo@phys.ethz.ch
authors.forename: Harry
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Figi
authors.forename: Mojca
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jazbinsek
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hunziker
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Koechlin
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Günter
mesh_terms: D003460:Crystallization / Q000379:methods*; D004581:Electronics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006358:Hot Temperature; D008422:Materials Testing; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*; D043942:Nanotubes / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D009930:Organic Chemicals / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D009930:Organic Chemicals