Abstract

In the past few years, organic materials have gained much interest for application in nonlinear optical devices. The initial scepsis towards these new materials has decreased, since interesting results have been obtained using these materials. The advantages of such materials, expected by early workers in the field, have partially been proven. High electro-optic coefficients have been reported, and reasonably well performing integrated optic devices have been realized [1]. Some other items, such as long term stability, mode matching and low cost production, still need further investigations and development. Nonlinear optic organic materials can be divided in several classes: organic (single) crystals, Langmuir-Blodgett films and several polymeric systems (solid-solutions, main-chain polymers, sidechain polymers). Until now, side-chain polymers appear to be the most promising class, mainly because of their attractive processing characteristics and the flexibility in molecular design.

© 1991 Optical Society of America