Electronic electro-optic (EEO) phase modulation is a key emerging technology for the chip-scale inter-conversion of signals between the electronic and photonic domains. The recent discovery of the ferroelectric nematic (NF) liquid crystal phase, a three dimensional fluid of rod-shaped organic molecules having near-perfect equilibrium polar molecular orientational order, offers attractive opportunities for the creation of second-order nonlinear optical materials for EEO. Here we propose and realize a design motif for NF EEO molecules in which few-nanometer-long molecular rods are functionalized both for electro-static end-to-end association, facilitating NF phase formation, and for chromophoric optical nonlinearity, enabling high EEO efficiency, a combination enabling an active second-order nonlinear EEO medium that is 100% chromophoric.
@article{arxiv.2509.00607,
title = {Fully-chromophoric ferroelectric nematics for electronic electro-optics},
author = {Xi Chen and Andrew Bradfield and Chirag Patel and Pavel Savechenkov and Jason W. Sickler and Gianlorenzo Masini and Joseph E. Maclennan and Noel A. Clark and Cory Pecinovsky and Matthew A. Glaser},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.00607},
year = {2025}
}