title: Measuring order in contact-poled organic electrooptic materials with variable-angle polarization-referenced absorption spectroscopy (VAPRAS).
abstract: Organic nonlinear electrooptical (ONLO) chromophores must be acentrically ordered for the ONLO material to have electrooptic (EO) activity. The magnitude of the order is characterized by the acentric order parameter, <cos(3) β>, where β is the major Euler angle between the main axis of the chromophore and the poling field which imposes the acentric order. The acentric order parameter, which is difficult to measure directly, is related to the centrosymmetric order parameter, defined as <P(2)> = ½(3<cos(2) β>-1), through the underlying statistical distribution. We have developed a method to determine centrosymmetric order of the ONLO chromophores when the order is low (i.e., <P(2)> < 0.1). We have extended the method (begun by Graf et al. J. Appl. Phys. 1994, 75, 3335.) based on the absorption of light to determine the centrosymmetric order parameter induced by a poling field on a thin film sample of ONLO material. We find that the order parameters, analyzed by two different methods, are similar and also consistent with theoretical estimates from modeling of the system using coarse-grained Monte Carlo statistical mechanical methods.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, 109 Bagley Hall, Box 351700, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: Benjamin C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Olbricht
authors.forename: Philip A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Sullivan
authors.forename: Peter C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Dennis
authors.forename: Jeffrey T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Hurst
authors.forename: Lewis E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Stephanie J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Benight
authors.forename: Joshua A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Davies
authors.forename: Antao
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Bruce E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Eichinger
authors.forename: Philip J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Reid
authors.forename: Larry R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Dalton
authors.forename: Bruce H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Robinson