Structural and nonlinear optical properties of Crystal-Violet octupolar dyes dispersed in bulk SiO2-sonogel optical-glasses

► Synthesis of novel hybrid SiO2 sonogel systems containing octupolar CV-chromophores. ► Successful quadratic NLO/SHG characterizations were performed in bulk hybrid samples. ► The multipolar CV-nature and supramolecular ordering allowed high SHG-activity. ► SHG-signals of the guest octupoles grow exponentially with the CV-dopant loading.