Optical Measurement of the Glass Transition Temperature of Polymer Waveguides for Integrated Optics

The development of polymeric devices for integrated optical applications has recently received much attention [1]. The thermodynamic properties of the waveguiding materials are of vital interest in this field. In particular the fabrication of active components based on poled nonlinear chromophore functionalized polymers requires knowledge of the materials’ glass transition temperature T g , since the relaxation of noncentrosymmetric orientational order is strongly related to the glass transition.