Sol-gel materials for second-order nonlinear optics

Sol-gel processing of new materials for second-order nonlinear optics promises to be a simple and highly versatile synthetic route among those that have been evaluated to achieve large and stable second-harmonic generation. Introduction to various types of organic chromophore-inorganic matrix hybrid materials that have been fabricated via sol-gel methodology and a survey of the recent efforts in optimizing their nonlinear optical efficiencies are presented. It is incurred that main-chain chromophore-embedded processable hybrids with high glass transition temperatures and thermal stabilites offer great potential in the quest for building a device based on second-order nonlinear optical efficiency of synthetic materials.