AGING IN NONLINEAR-OPTICAL POLYMER WAVE-GUIDES

The role that polymers will play as optical waveguides in the photonic communications revolution is described, including examples of polymer photonic devices, physical and optical requirements, aging mechanisms , competing materials, electric-field poled polymer films, room-temper ature processed polymer films, and analytical methods for studying phy sical aging. Several important recent aging studies on nonlinear optic al polymers, both thermoplastic and thermoset, are reviewed.