Design, Synthesis and Characterization of New Bimechanistic Optical Power Limiters Based on Reverse Saturable and Two-photon Absorption

During the past five years there has been considerable progress in the design of organic materials for optical power limiting (OPL) applications. One of the more promising and widely studied material approaches involves reverse saturable absorption (RSA) from various excited states. We have recently been examining the efficacy of utilizing highly absorbing photogenerated charge states for RSA. Both polaronic radical cations and bipolaronic dications are possible candidates for this mode of optical limiting. Equally intriguing are new approaches to designing chromophores with large two-photon absorption (TPA) cross-sections. For some pulse durations the effective two-photon cross-section for bis-(diphenylamino)diphenylpolyenes, and dendrimers based on these repeat units, are extraordinaryly large, indicative of excited state absorption. In this presentation we will discuss the possibility of combining these two optical limiting mechanistic paradigms in single structures, which may then be considered as bimechanistic optical power limiters.