Abstract

Interest in organic materials for electro-optic device fabrication is due to the large molecular nonlinearities^[1], the relative ease of fabrication^[2], the ability to tailor the molecular structure through organic synthesis^[3] and the potential for very high-speed low power devices^[4]. The observation of an electric-field-induced quasi-permanent ordering^[5], which eliminates the inversion symmetry and allows second order processes, has led to much work on the parameters which determine the degree^[6] and the stability of alignment. This alignment induces a birefringence in the film^[7] which is observed as the index perpendicular to the surface of the film via the surface plasmon^[8].

© 1992 Optical Society of America