Synthesis of Novel Y-type Nonlinear Optical Polyesters with Enhanced Thermal Stability of Dipole Alignment

2,4-Di-(2'-hydroxyethoxy)benzylidenemalononitrile (3) was prepared and polymerized with terephthaloyl chloride and adipoyl chloride to yield novel Y-type polyesters 4 and 5 containing dioxybenzylidenemalononitrile groups as NLO-chromophores, which constituted parts of the polymer backbone. The resulting polymers 4 and 5 are soluble in common organic solvents such as acetone and N,N-dimethylformamide. Polymers 4 and 5 showed thermal stability up to 300 ${^{\circ}C}$ in thermogravimetric analysis with glass-transition temperatures obtained from differential scanning calorimetry in the range 83-94 ${^{\circ}C}$. The second harmonic generation (SHG) coefficients ($d_{33}$) of poled polymer films at the 1064 nm fundamental wavelength were around $6.48\;{\times}\;10^{-9}$ esu. The dipole alignment exhibited high thermal stability even at 10 ${^{\circ}C}$ higher than $T_g$ and no significant SHG decay was observed below 105 ${^{\circ}C}$ partially due to the main-chain character of polymer structure, which is acceptable for NLO device applications.