Design and Synthesis of High-Performance Nonlinear Optical Chromophores

摘要

For several years the world has relied on electronics for information processing. However, we are nearing the limits of traditional electronic signal processing and transmission. Optical technology will be required in order to gain processing rates above 50 GHz and a transmission distance greater than 1 meter. The optical technology is described as photonics, which is the analog of electronics. This means that photons, rather than electrons, will be used to acquire, store, transmit and process information. Many photonic applications are already in use. These include fiber-optic communication lines, diode laser sources, organic liquid-crystal displays and optical memories There are many advantages of photonics over electronics. Optical switching, for example, occurs on a femtosecond time scale. No electronic process can come close to matching that time, but optical processes can. And with optical signals, there is no electrical and magnetic interference, so there is less crosstalk between channels.