Highly Rugged and Highly Stable Terahertz Electrooptic Switches and Modulators

The goal of this program is to develop an organic nanosecond speed nonlinear optical material that responds in the 700 nm to 1.5 Km region of the spectrum, and to fabricate a modulator based on it and POC\'s USP 5,067,788, Nov 26, 1991. Phase I effort will involve integrating POC\'s recent advances in stabilizing poled X(2) polymer with an ultra high speed (> 5 GHz) optical modulator in a monolithic multilayer structure consisting of surface plasmon wave polarization resonant coupling. Although the poled organic polymer in the thin film configuration (which is consistent with POC\'s patented modulator) offers many advantages over photorefractive crystals including a large ED coefficient and low dielectric constant, the decay of the ED coefficient due to relaxation is a serious problem. In fact, this is exactly the issue POC intends to address in Phase I, based on its ongoing efforts involving crosslinking and optimized processing. POC will work closely with Jeff Lindsay of the Naval Weapons Center, China Lake and Prof. Sukant Tripathy of the University of Lowell, MA. During Phase II, we will optimize the material results of Phase I and produce EO plasma modulators to be integrated with fielded Navy systems. .