Third-order optical nonlinearity of DNA‐CTMA complex doped with different aromatic moieties

•Novel materials based on functionalized DNA with aromatic compounds were obtained.•These materials exhibited good optical properties and large Stokes shifts.•The obtained materials present large transparency range (cut of at ca 400 nm).•The fluorescence analysis showed a potential use of the materials as OLEDs. The water insoluble deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) functionalized with cetyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTMA) surfactant was used as matrix for two different aromatic compounds, namely N-(4-methylphenyl)-2,4-dinitroaniline and N-(2,4,6-trinitrophenyl)naphtalen-2-amine to study their linear and nonlinear optical (NLO) properties. The first ones were measured in terms of UV‐Vis and fluorescence spectroscopy, while the NLO properties were investigated by the optical third harmonic generation technique. The results show that the obtained materials are potentially interesting for application in photonics.