Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2011
In 1979 the Air Force undertook a program to establish the principles for the design, synthesis, and processing of ultrastructured, electroactive polymers. The promising candidates were determined to be rigid rod polymers. In 1982 this approach was expanded to include the investigation of nonlinear optical properties in rigid rod polymers. The initial results in 1985, demonstrating the concept of multifunctionality, were quite startling. The polymers, PBT and PBO, which were designed as structural polymers with high strength, high modulus, and excellent thermaloxidative stability, were found to possess large nonresonant macroscopic third order optical susceptibilities. Their origin resides in the ultrafast, lossless excitations of highly-charged π- electron states. The state-of-the-art for nonlinear optical rigid rod polymers is reviewed.