Photonic Microresonators from Charge Transfer in Polymer Particles: Toward Enhanced and Tunable Two-Photon Emission

Novel photonic microresonators with enhanced nonlinear optical (NLO) intensity are fabricated from polymer particles. As an additional advantage, they offer band gap tunability from the visible to near-infrared regions. A special protocol including (i) copolymerization of 4-(1-pyrenyl)-styrene, styrene, and 1,4-divinylbenzene, (ii) extraction of a dispersible and partly dissolvable, lightly cross-linked polymer network (PN), and (iii) treatment of the blue-emitting PN with electron acceptor (A) molecules such as 1,2,4,5-tetracyanobenzene (TCNB) and 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) furnishes orange- and red-emitting D-A charge-transfer (CT) complexes with the pendant pyrene units. These complexes, here named PN-TCNB and PN-TCNQ, respectively, precipitate as microparticles upon the addition of water and subsequent ultrasonication. Upon electronic excitation, these spherical microparticles act as whispering-gallery-mode resonators by displaying optical resonances in the photoluminescence (PL) spectra because of light confinement. Further, the trapped incident light increases the light-matter interaction and thereby enhances the PL intensity, including the two-photon luminescence. The described protocol for polymer-based CT microresonators with tunable NLO emissions holds promise for a myriad of photonic applications.