Optical Limiting Analysis of Phthalocyanines in Polymer Thin Films

Abstract

This paper reports on the effect of embedding twelve phthalocyanines containing In, Ga, Zn and Al as central metals in polymer thin films on their optical limiting abilities. This paper also examines the effect of forming a covalent link between zinc tetraamino phthalocyanine (10) and poly (methyl acrylic acid) (PMAA), and Zn (11) or OHAl (12) octacarboxy phthalocyanines with polyethylenimine (PEI). The average film thickness (for phthalocyanines mixed or linked to polymers) of each Pc/Polymer films on glass was 95 mu m. The hyperpolarizability of the twelve phthalocyanines was found to be in the range of 10-26 to 10-24 esu.L. This is significantly higher than the hyperpolarizabilities of these phthalocyanines in solution, which ranged from 10-30 to 10-26 esu.L. Degradation studies seem to indicate that placing a phthalocyanine within a polymer thin film may protect it slightly from photo- and thermal degradation.