ABSTRACT

This entry presents significant advances in the field of nonlinear molecular optics in the critical area of material engineering and the related optoelectronics device technologies. Leverage from the optoelectronic and telecommunication industry, together with the scientific motivations of a more fundamental nature, is strongly pushing forward a domain to which a large community of physicists, chemists, and electrical engineers provides a distinctively and rather unique cross-disciplinary flavor. As far as applied motivations are concerned, a major concern has to do with the necessity to fulfill the needs for key-signal processing functions. Exploration and demonstration of alternatives has become a priority target. The recognition of the importance of extending light–molecule interaction studies to encompass the nonlinear regime has now pervaded throughout the chemistry and chemical physics communities, whereby molecular nonlinear optics is now a well-established and active ongoing domain of research with a range of diverse goals, of synthetic, spectroscopic, or structural natures. Lastly, the emerging field of biophotonics has come to further fuel a new burst of research so as to provide biological studies of optimized nonlinear molecules or molecular assemblies acting as nanometer sensors in advanced microscopic setups capable of providing an intimate insight on cellular mechanisms.