Dr. Efstratios Kamitsos Efstratios Kamitsos received a diploma in chemistry from the University of Athens in 1978, and a Ph.D. in physical-inorganic chemistry from Brown University in 1983. He joined the Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute (TPCI) of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, in 1984 and is serving as Director of the TPCI since 1997. His research interests focus on structure and dynamics of fast ion conducting glasses and nanostructured glassy and organic-inorganic hybrid materials with advanced electrical and optical functionalities. He is the author and co-author of more than 175 papers in refereed journals and the co-editor of two books.
While ferroelectric crystalline materials are used widely in photonics, there is currently interest towards exploring new materials with non-linear optical (NLO) properties. Homogeneous glasses do not exhibit even-order optical response like second harmonic generation (SHG) due to their centrosymmetric nature. However, post-synthesis treatments like electro-thermal poling may transform optically passive glasses into functional glasses with NLO properties. The effects of electro-thermal poling are not well understood, and this makes the exploitation of glasses in photonics difficult. To progress in this direction, we investigate families of Na ion-containing glasses to establish correlations between structure/chemistry and SHG response and results of this work will be reviewed in this presentation.