Effect of methoxy or benzyloxy groups bound to an amino-benzene donor unit for various nonlinear optical chromophores as studied by hyper-Rayleigh scattering

We report the molecular first hyperpolarizability (β) of a series of nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophores comprising amino-benzene with an additional methoxy or benzyloxy group as the donor units, polyene, phenyl-di-vinylene, or thienyl-di-vinylene as the π-electron bridges, and 2-(dicyanomethylene)-3-cyano-4,5,5-trimethyl-2,5-dihydrofuran (TCF), 2-(dicyanomethylene)-3-cyano-4,5-dimethyl-5-trifluoromethyl-2,5-dihydrofuran (CF3–TCF) or 2-(dicyanomethylene)-3-cyano-4-methyl-5-phenyl-5-trifluoromethyl-2,5-dihydrofuran (CF3–phenyl–TCF) as the acceptor units. An improvement in linear and nonlinear optical properties was found in the long π-conjugated NLO chromophores with methoxy or benzyloxy groups compared with benchmark chromophores without these groups. We also discuss a possible mechanism with a contribution for improvement, that is, intra-molecular hydrogen bonding.

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► We report the molecular first hyperpolarizability of a series of NLO chromophores.
► Effect of methoxy or benzyloxy group bound to amino-benzene donor unit was studied.
► Improvements in NLO properties were found for the modified NLO chromophores.
► Intra-molecular hydrogen bonding as a mechanism for the improvement was proposed.
► We found an important area of progress in the design of NLO chromophores.