Second harmonic generation measurements in aligned samples of liquid crystals composed of bent-core molecules

Abstract

The second-order susceptibility tensor of three liquid crystals composed of banana-shaped molecules has been fully determined. The measurements were carried out in single domain samples, aligned by means of an electric field parallel to the cell surface. Special care was taken with the appropriate determination of the index mismatch between the fundamental and second harmonic waves. This was achieved by using samples of different thickness. This parameter is very important for obtaining reliable values of the second order susceptibility tensor components, and is seldom directly measured. The suitability of the experimental procedure was checked by comparing the results obtained for the reference compound P-8-O-PIMB with previously reported measurements for this material. The d_ij coefficients obtained in this work are in the range 1–4 pm V⁻¹ and are compared with other values obtained in previous reports.