Relationship of the second order nonlinear optical coefficient to energy gap in inorganic non-centrosymmetric crystals

Second order nonlinear optical coefficient and energy gap data collected from the literature have been classified and are organized by plotting their respective values, The two-dimensional plots indicate that both large energy gap and small X-(2) and small energy gap and large X(2) are highly correlated. It was found that a single power law expression cannot represent the data well for energy gaps over the entire range from 0 to 10 eV. Therefore a fit for narrow energy gap (0 < 1 eV) and for wide energy gap (E > 1 eV) materials are provided, A corresponding trend and fitting strategy is also demonstrated for the figure of merit (FOM) which is used to rank materials for wavelength conversion efficiency. Results of the analysis are used to estimate the second order nonlinear optical properties and conversion efficiencies of several less-well-known materials, is that ordered GaInP2 would be exceptional as an E-O waveguide material and that the FOM of AgGaTe2 is 3.3 times that of AgGaSe2 and that crystals of HgGa2Se4 and TexSe(1-x) alloys should be of distinct interest as wavelength conversion materials for infrared applications. The maximum attainable X-(2) is in the range of 3500-4000 pm/V for bound electrons. For energy gaps less than one eV, the increase in x((2)) considerably. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.