Synthesis and characterization of polymers and interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) with nonlinear optical (NLO) properties and related numerical studies

Copolymers of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and 2-propenoic acid, 2-methyl-, 2-[[[[4-methyl-3-[[[2-methyl-4-nitrophenyl)amino]carbonyl]aminophenyl]carbonyl]oxy]ethyl ester (PAMEE) exhibiting nonlinear optical (NLO) properties have been synthesized. Two kinds of urethane containing interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs), consisting of nonlinear optical (NLO) chromophore, 2-methyl-4-nitroaniline (MNA) or Disperse Red1 (DR1) have been synthesized. The IPN systems consist of either aliphatic polycarbonate urethane (PCU) or 2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide (PPO) as one network and crosslinked poly (MMA-co-PAMEE) or poly (MMA-co-PMNEE) as the second network. Copolymers and interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) were characterized by IR spectroscopy, UV-VIS spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and second harmonic generation (SHG) measurements. The thin films of copolymers and IPNs were optically transparent and the corona poled polymers produced relatively large and stable SHG signals at room temperature.; To understand the polarization decay of our NLO polymer we studied a simple theoretical model which can account for the main features which we observe. The addition of an apparent "chemical" reaction with a reaction activation energy EAB to the neighbor-facilitated Fredrickson-Anderson model shows the existence of a beta relaxation occurring simultaneously with the main alpha process. The combination of an Ising-model with antiferromagnetic interaction and the neighbor-facilitated Fredrickson-Anderson model allows a description of the polarization decay of polarized materials, such as our polymers, below the glass transition temperature Tg. The relaxation time for the polarization scales with the relaxation time of the alpha-process of the glass transition, and shows a typical curvature in the ln tau versus T-1 plot. Real polymers, such as poly(MMA-co-PAMEE) which we study possess both of these features and its experimental average dipolar orientation matches closely with the theoretical average dipolar orientation below the glass transition temperature.