Self-Assembled Organic Nanocrystals with Strong Nonlinear Optical Response.

Rosenne, Shaked; Grinvald, Eran; Shirman, Elijah; Neeman, Lior; Dutta, Sounak; Bar-Elli, Omri; Ben-Zvi, Regev; Oksenberg, Eitan et al. · Nano Lett · 2015

basic_science · Level V

Where this comes from

Abstract

Facile molecular self-assembly affords a new family of organic nanocrystals that, unintuitively, exhibit a significant nonlinear optical response (second harmonic generation, SHG) despite the relatively small molecular dipole moment of the constituent molecules. The nanocrystals are self-assembled in aqueous media from simple monosubstituted perylenediimide (PDI) molecular building blocks. Control over the crystal dimensions can be achieved via modification of the assembly conditions. The combination of a simple fabrication process with the ability to generate soluble SHG nanocrystals with tunable sizes may open new avenues in the area of organic SHG materials.