Recent, remarkable progress in organic semiconductor devices, typified by organic light-emitting diodes, has opened a door to the next type of organic device: the organic semiconductor laser. In this paper, we describe recent progress and future problems in research and development on organic semiconductor lasers.

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In recent broadband photonic network system, high speed optical data transmission is required. Electrooptic (EO) polymers are attractive because of their large nonlinearity, fast response time and ease of device fabrication. Therefore the EO polymers are expected for the application of ultra-high speed EO switch and/or wide bandwidth EO modulator, both of which will be used in future photonic network. In this report, recent progress of EO polymers and their application to waveguide type devices are described.

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Polymer materials offer a number of interesting features for the fabrication of optical waveguides. Potential applications and market opportunities continue to grow for low cost, reliable, passive and active components for telecommunication and data-communication. Organic polymers have attracted a lot of attention due to their ease of fabrication and structural flexibility. These are important factors with regard to their use as packaging and optical interconnects. In addition, the thermo-optic (TO) coefficient of polymers is an order of magnitude larger than that of silica glass and some non-aromatic polymers have very low birefringence. These are desirable characteristics in terms of their application to such optical integrated devices as TO switches. The applications for polymer waveguides are therefore divided into two categories. The first comprises optical packaging and interconnects and the second, optical integrated devices. This paper presents the requirements for polymer waveguides and describes some work which was carried out with our materials and fabrication technique.

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High-reflection multi-layered mirrors have ever been fabricated using inorganic dielectric materials. Their fabrication methods are almost all based on vacuum evaporation or sputtering. On the other hand, polymeric thin-films such as photo-resists can be easily obtained by spin coating. In this study, we report the results of fabrication of the multi-layered mirrors by spin coating of two different polymers. Optical thickness of layers for λ/4 was controlled by adjusting concentration of solutions and by changing rotation speed of spin coating. Simple repetitive-processes of spin coating and drying solvents yielded reflectivity higher than 99 % at a wavelength of 633 nm after stacking 49 layers. We also report possible applications for novel photonic-devices using polymeric high-reflection multi-layered mirrors or all-polymeric functional devices.

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Recent progress of high-speed plastic optical fiber network technology was reviewed. The Gigabit POF network was experimentally demonstrated, which enabled a real-time interactive communication by high resolution motion picture. We also demonstrated a telemedicine by utilizing the real-time interactive communication system over the gigabit POF networks. In order to upgrade the bit rate of POF network to higher than 10 Gbps, a perfluorinated (PF) polymer with low material dispersion is a promising candidate. The bandwidth potential of the PF polymer based GI POF is estimated to be higher than that of the silica based multimode fiber. It is also indicated that the developments of high-speed laser or VCSEL for the POF network and of its beam management technologies are strongly required for realizing over gigabit POF networks.

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We proposed a field sequential color display system using a flexible fast-response liquid crystal device and a two-dimensional array of three-primary color light emitting diodes. The flexible device was fabricated with monostable ferroelectric liquid crystal with polymer networks and polymer wall spacers supporting thin plastic substrates. The full-color display operation of the bent-state device was achieved, when the device driven sequentially by each color signal voltage was illuminated with three-primary color intermitted light from the light emitting diode array.

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