Second Harmonic Generation in Thin Zinc Sulfide Films

Optical second harmonic generation, mechanical stresses, and structure are investigated in thin polycrystalline zinc sulfide films. The resulting data indicate that there is no correlation between the mechanical stresses and the quadratic optical nonlinearity. In view of the X-ray diffraction results, the nature of the nonlinearity is explained using the model of a nanotextured film consisting of crystallites with the sphalerite or wurtzite structure. It is shown that this model allows satisfactory agreement between calculations and experiment.