REVIEW ARTICLE

PUBLISHED ONLINE: 30 JULY 2010|DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.160

Organic photonics for communications

Jenny Clark1,2* and Guglielmo Lanzani1

Photons as information carriers have the potential to meet the ever-increasing demands on bandwidth and information den-
sity in fields such as information and communication technology, biomedicine and computing. Organic semiconductors may
be well-suited to such applications, thanks to their ability to transmit, modulate and detect light in an architecture that is low
cost, flexible, lightweight and robust. Here we review recent breakthroughs in organic photonics, including ultrafast all-optical
modulation in polymer photonic crystals, silicon/organic hybrid systems, gain switching in polymer amplifiers and lasers, and
new devices such as hybrid organic/inorganic electrically pumped lasers.

I
n the field of optical communications, organic materials will prob-
ably never replace standard inorganic materials and technologies
such as silica optical fibres (SOFs) and inorganic semiconductor
lasers and detectors. The combination of design and fabrication
expertise, manufacturing infrastructure and strong market posi-
tion makes these inorganic technologies unbeatable — not always
in performance, but certainly in price. However, there are applica-
tions for which inorganics are not ideally suited; those requiring, for
example, colour tunability, large active areas, mechanical flexibility
or low-cost processing. Organics are a promising candidate for such
applications as they combine the material properties of plastics with
high optical cross-sections, large and ultrafast nonlinear responses,
and broad spectral tunability. In terms of fabrication, they can be
solution-processed at low cost, allowing large-area deposition (roll-
to-roll or contact printing, for example) on non-standard substrates.
In addition, because organics allow dipole optical transitions
between confined states, they tend to have large optical cross-sec-
tions (typically 10−15 cm2 for peak absorption, which provides a
distinct advantage when interacting with light in either emission,
absorption or non-resonant modulation processes.
We believe that the way ahead lies in complementing, rather than
replacing, standard inorganic technologies. Examples include recent
hybrid systems that exploit the properties of both organics and inor-
ganics1–4, or the use of plastic optical fibres (POFs) for short-haul
data communication networks, in which glass fibres transport the
signal over long distances, saving the more flexible and robust POFs
for ‘last mile’ applications.
This Review focuses on what we regard to be the latest develop-
ments in the use of organic materials in photonic devices, with a
strong relevance to applications in communications. In doing this
we leave out particular application areas such as organic light-emit-
ting diodes (OLEDs) for displays, sensors, solar cells and nonlinear
optical materials (typically for second-harmonic generation), which
are the subject of dedicated reviews and books5–12. We also exclude
established materials such as organic dyes for lasing or photoconduc-
tors for printing, whose extensive application is well-established.
Organics as light sources
Organic light sources generally take two forms: electrical injection
OLEDs, or light-emitting transistors (LETs) and optically pumped
organic semiconductor lasers (OSLs). OLEDs are now commercially
available in displays13 and their science and technology are exten-
sively discussed in many reviews and books7–9; they will therefore
not be further considered here. We only remark on one particular
recent breakthrough: the demonstration of fast OLED modulation
(>60 MHz) using high-mobility polymers and small active areas
(0.018 mm2; ref. 14), which will be important for applications such
as data communication.
In contrast with OLEDs, organic LETs are relatively new devices11
that have recently been enhanced by the discovery of ambipolar
transport in polymer materials15. Many hope that organic LETs hold
the key to achieving electrically pumped organic lasers16,17, owing
to their high achievable current densities17 and to the fact that the
recombination zone for light emission is spatially separated from the
electrodes, which is known as quench emission. However, organic
LETs have been extensively reviewed in refs 10,11 and so will not be
discussed here in great detail.
OSLs, on the other hand, are a resurging field of interest in organic
photonics18, and this is partly due to the ability of conjugated poly-
mers to demonstrate efficient optically pumped lasing in the solid
state. Ref. 19 gives an excellent summary of the variety of cavity con-
figurations in which this has been demonstrated. Lasing has been
achieved in solid, compact, distributed feedback (DFB) resonators,
a schematic of which is shown in Fig. 1a. Figure 1b shows photolu-
minescence, amplified spontaneous emission and laser emission of
a typical conjugated polymer film.
The importance of such DFB periodic structures lies in their
ability to be readily incorporated into planar waveguides or POFs20
using simple soft lithography techniques such as imprinting (Fig. 1a).
Owing to the broad gain spectra of organics and also to the wide
choice of lasing materials, DFB lasers are highly tunable throughout
the whole visible spectrum21, even during operation22–25.
Breakthroughs in material26–28 and device29–33 design have led to
large increases in the efficiency of OSLs over the past decade. When
pumped with nanosecond pulses, for example, state-of-the-art DFB
polymer lasers operate with lasing thresholds as low as 3.6 W cm−2
(36 nJ cm−2; ref. 29), allowing pumping with cheap inorganic diode
lasers34,35 or even commercially available LEDs36 (Fig. 2). Recent
work has exploited the large two-photon absorption cross-section of
polymers to demonstrate nonlinear pumping of a blue-wavelength
laser 37. This opens the way to the pumping of blue lasers with low-
cost red diode lasers, creating hybrid electrically pumped polymer
lasers. The replacement of expensive bulky laser pump sources with
small solid-state diode lasers, which are commercially available and
extremely cheap, is a real breakthrough for potential applications
because it promises compact, cheap organic sources operating at

1
Centre for Nanoscience and Technology, Dipartmento di Fisica, Italian Institute for Technology at Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci, 32, 20133
Milano, Italy. 2Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, J.J. Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 OHE, United Kingdom. *e-mail: jc414@cam.ac.uk.

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NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.160 REVIEW ARTICLE
a m=1 a b
Pulsed current 4

Light emission (a.u.)

V
Air source

InGaN LED 3
CYTOP
2
Polymer ADS233YE 568 nm
m=0 m=2
Silica 1
Pump filter 555 nm
Laser output 0
Substrate 0 50 100 150
Peak drive current (A)

Figure 2 | Hybrid system: An inorganic LED pumping an organic laser.

80 a, Schematic of a hybrid InGaN semiconducting polymer (F8BT random co-
μm

60
40 polymer, ADS233YE) laser. b, Light emission at 568 nm (blue circles) and
20
555 nm (orange squares) as a function of peak drive current from the laser
1
in a. Figure reproduced with permission from ref. 36, © 2008 AIP.
μm

2
3
0 1 2 3
μm combined with the first 16, is to use device configurations in which
Energy (eV) the emitting, recombination and transport zones are separated to
b 3.0 2.8 2.6 2.4 2.2 2.0 1.8 avoid charge quenching and quenching from the electrodes20. These
typically take the form of LETs, which have the added benefit of
1.0 higher achievable current densities than OLEDs16,17. Direct elec-
trical OSL pumping has not yet been achieved because of device
0.8 constraints, loss mechanisms (Box 1), and the fact that organic elec-
trical devices cannot operate fast enough to produce the nanosec-
Intensity output (a.u.)

0.6 ond pulsed excitation currently required for lasing.

0.4
0.2
0.0
400 450 500
Wavelength (nm)
Figure 1 | Organic DFB laser. a, Top: schematic of a DFB polymer laser
with a grating period of Λ. Feedback occurs in-plane (modes m = 0 and
m = 2) and emission is vertical (m = 1). Feedback is achieved through
index coupling, and lasing under pulsed optical pumping takes place in the
gain switching regime112. Bottom: schematic (left) and AFM measurement
(right) of a DFB grating created through soft-lithography (imprinting).
b, Photoluminescence (black), amplified spontaneous emission (red) and
laser emission (blue) of a poly(9,9-dioctylfluorene) film.
visible wavelengths. However, for many applications, longer life-
times, further reductions in lasing thresholds and the possibility of
continuous-wave (CW) operation are required before this field can
be brought to full maturity. Hybrid electrically pumped devices are
a good example of the power of combining inorganics and organ-
ics to exploit the best of both worlds. Another recent example is
the demonstration of a spaser-based nanolaser, one of the small-
est lasers ever created, in which an organic gain media is dispersed
among silica-covered gold nanoparticles2.
Despite the development of hybrid electrical polymer lasers, the
realization of all-organic electrical injection OSLs is still the ‘grand
challenge’ in the field, and has so far proved elusive. Such schemes
aim to exploit the semiconductor properties, and in particular the
ambipolar charge transport properties, of organics15. So far, two
approaches — or a combination of both — have been attempted. The
first is to use new materials designed to combine both high charge
carrier mobility with large stimulated emission, which are gener-
ally mutually exclusive16,38. High mobility is required to achieve high
current densities, which hopefully will result in exciton densities
that are high enough for lasing. The second approach, sometimes
An intermediate step would therefore be to create a CW opti-
cally pumped OSL. However, although studies have demonstrated
organic solid-state CW amplification39,40, true CW operation in an
OSL has not yet been achieved, owing to loss mechanisms. Ground-
state absorption losses can be reduced using polymer blends26, but
there is an alternative, more radical approach based on controlling
inter-chain interactions, as both charge generation and singlet state
annihilation — two major loss mechanisms — are mediated by inter-
550 600 chain coupling 41,42. Controlling molecular interactions is therefore
attractive for reducing inter-chain coupling while also keeping the
polymer density high enough to produce efficient lasers. A number
of approaches have been proposed, including the use of rotaxanes to
coat the conjugated polymer and thus form a ‘co-axial cable’ struc-
ture27,43, bulky side-groups to increase inter-chain distances, or spiro
compounds44 and dendrimers45,46 to decrease intermolecular inter-
actions while also forming low-loss waveguiding films40,44,46.
Recent work has suggested that singlet–triplet annihilation at
high exciton densities is an important loss mechanism47, and such
losses will be much larger in electrically pumped OSLs because
of the high ratio of triplet formation. Energy transfer to a triplet
quencher in conjugated polymer films, similar to the mechanism
used in dye lasers, was recently demonstrated48, and this could prove
to be an important method of reducing triplet losses.
Changes to the cavity structure are also important for reduc-
ing losses. For example, several authors have demonstrated further
reductions in lasing thresholds29–31 using a mixed first- and second-
order DFB grating structure. Using higher refractive index sub-
strates increases the index contrast and confinement, which further
reduces losses32.
Apart from the obvious applications of displays8,9, organic light
sources in general are well-suited for optical sensing 7, on-chip spec-
troscopy 49 and data communications14,50. Furthermore, in sensors,
OSLs are excellent when used as transducers themselves, rather than
as simple sources, as they can be tailored to be both sensitive and
highly selective. Selectivity is achieved by exploiting the mechanical51
or chemical nature of the organic gain material itself 52–54, or through
chemical or biological functionalization, which is made easy because
of its organic nature55. Sensitivity can be achieved by exploiting either
the nonlinear nature of the lasing threshold52 or slope efficiency 56 by
measuring intensity changes, or the narrow band of emission by

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REVIEW ARTICLE NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.160

Box 1 | The optical properties of organics

Excited states in organics a Triplet Singlet Charge

Generally, the absorption of light from the ground state S0 to the
first optically accessible excited state S1 (with a typical cross-sec- Dn
tion of 10−15 cm2) creates a bound electron–hole pair known as Sn Charge
an exciton (Fig. B1a). Adding more energy to the system through kCT
absorption
excitation to a higher-lying state Sn can lead to exciton dissoci-
ation with a charge-transfer rate constant kCT, resulting in the Tn krec D0
formation of free charges85. These generally long-lived (micro- Triplet kISC S1
to millisecond) charges can recombine with a rate constant krec absorption
to reform excitons. In addition, triplet excitons can be formed, Stimulated
T1 emission
generally with low yield, through intersystem-crossing at a rate
Ground-state Spontaneous
constant of kISC. emission
absorption

Nonlinear responses S0

Owing to the large π-electron delocalization and the ability to

design asymmetry into organic semiconductors, organic mole- b Singlet
cules can have large third-order optical nonlinearities (the third- absorption
Ground-state
order component of the electric susceptibility of the medium, absorption Charge
Triplet
which at resonance is ∼10−8 esu). This nonlinearity is useful for absorption
absorption
all-optical switching and processing applications by exploiting

Intensity
the optical Kerr effect 110,111.

Gain
Stimulated emission occurs from the S1 level, and for las-
ing to occur we require amplification to be greater than loss.
Amplification depends on the stimulated emission cross-section
(typically 10−16 cm2), as well as the population inversion den-
sity. A reduction in amplification through the depopulation
of singlets (a reduction in the population inversion density)
results mainly from annihilation processes and exciton disso-
ciation. Losses include ground-state ‘self ’ absorption, scatter-
ing in the cavity and absorption from triplet and charge excited
states, whose absorption overlaps with the stimulated emission
(Fig. B1b) and whose long lifetimes allow significant population
build-up.
Optical gain modulation
Gain in conjugated polymers, if achieved, can be optically con-
trolled by re-exciting the material to the Sn level (typically using
infrared or near-infrared light), causing charge generation at a
rate kCT. These charges quench the stimulated emission and gain
because their absorption spectrum overlaps with the stimulated
Stimulated
emission
400 500 600 700 800 900
Wavelength (nm)
Figure B1 | The optical properties of organics. a, Energy level structure
of organic semiconductors, showing charges, singlet excitons and triplet
excitons. Vertical arrows are optical transitions, whereas wavy arrows
are non-radiative transitions, indicating vibrational relaxation (black),
intersystem crossing (blue, with rate constant kISC), charge generation
(red, rate constant kCT) or charge recombination (green, rate constant
krec). b, Idealized spectra of a common conjugated polymer. Note that
charge absorption overlaps spectrally with stimulated emission.
emission band (Fig. B1b). Recovery of the emission depends on
the lifetime of the charges, which can be sub-picosecond owing
to quantum confinement 85,86. This paves the way to all-optical
logic in plastic media88.

measuring wavelength changes53,57. For example, if the laser is operat-
ing at lasing threshold, small changes in the environment may switch
off lasing, thus giving a large response to a small stimulus.
Commercialization of organic semiconductor lasers for appli-
cations other than as short-lived disposable parts requires the life-
times of organic materials to be significantly improved. This was the
case for OLEDs; the lifetimes were successfully improved and they
are now deployed in numerous commercial applications. In addi-
tion, the efficiency and threshold energy of these devices must be
improved by reducing losses, with the aim of enabling CW lasing
and possibly electrical injection lasers.
Transmission media
Information can be transmitted over various distances. For exam-
ple, SOFs are commonly used in telecommunications for long-
distance connections over hundreds of kilometres. They have
excellent characteristics for this, including low attenuation (typi-
cally ∼0.2 dB km−1), high bandwidth and high transmission rates
(up to 25 Tb s−1), thereby discouraging direct competition.
However, over shorter distances, POFs made mainly from
poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) or perfluorinated (PF) poly-
mers such as poly(perfluorobutenyl vinyl ether) (CYTOP) are
taking over from copper cables as the demand for high-speed,
low-cost connections increases58, for example in industrial auto-
mation networks (PROFINET) and multimedia communication
in cars (MOST)59–62. In these applications, POFs are used instead
of SOFs despite their higher attenuation (typically of the order
of 100 dB km–1) because they are more flexible61 (with a smaller
bending radius of 5 mm), have better tolerance to tensile load and
stress63, are cheaper to produce and to install, and become less frag-
ile as their core radius is increased.
Current data transmission rates in standard step-index POFs
are typically hundreds of megabits per second over distances of
~100 m, but recent work has demonstrated that the goal of trans-
ferring data at rates of gigabits per second is now becoming a
reality. This is due to the development of improved modulation
schemes (discrete multitone modulation), which have allowed
transmission rates of 1.25 Gb s−1 over distances of ~100 m (ref. 62).

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NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.160 REVIEW ARTICLE
a 100 b
‘On’ state ‘On’ state Polymer Sn
laser 1.6 eV
80 D±
Pump S*1
Gate
Transmittance (%)

S1

Output intensity
60 3.2 eV 2.9 eV

LES LES S0
40

20
GS GS
‘Off’ state Polystyrene Dye
0
–2 –1 0 1 2 3 420 440 460 480 500
Time delay (ps) Wavelength (nm)

c d
π

Strip

Phase change (rad)

ON
ON
ΔT/T

0
Slot

OFF –π

–1 0 1 2 3 4 –2 0 2 4
Time (ps) Time (ps)

Figure 3 | Devices demonstrating ultrafast all-optical switching. a, Transmittance changes of a dye-doped polystyrene microcavity as a function of
pump–probe time delay, with an exponential fit (red line). Inset: schematic of energy levels, showing the locally excited state (LES) and ground state
(GS). b, Laser emission spectrum (red line) and emission when gate pulse is incident (green circles). Left inset: experimental set-up. Right inset: energy
level diagram. D± represent positive and negative charge states. c, Dynamics of stimulated emission in 2 mm of fluorene-doped POF (0.02% by weight).
Red circles denote only pump–probe measurements, and green circles denote pump–gate–probe measurements113. d, Nonlinear phase dynamics of a
silicon organic hybrid slot (green) and strip (red) waveguides. Dots represent measured values; thin solid lines are fits to the data. Figure reproduced with
permission from: a, ref. 83, © 2008 NPG; b, ref. 27, © 2009 AIP; d, ref. 1, © 2009 NPG.

Following pioneering work by Koike et al.64, further improvements Passive components. Organics are directly competing with silicon
have been made using graded-index (GI) POFs, in which the in this field, and although their transmission and optical confine-
refractive index between the core and cladding varies gradually to ment are generally lower than in silicon, organics offer the advan-
reduce modal dispersion58. Transfer rates of >40 Gb s−1 over dis- tages of temperature-independent operation, easy integration with
tances of ~100 m have now been demonstrated in GI-PF-POFs65, other components, non-planar devices and the possibility of creat-
which use expensive PF polymers such as CYTOP to reduce losses ing low-cost 3D structures. Three main techniques have emerged
from C–H vibrations. for the creation of polymer waveguides and other passive compo-
POFs are therefore becoming a tool not only for short-distance nents: direct writing 66,67, self-organization68 and soft-lithography 69,70.
data communication, but also for longer-distance applications, as Direct writing and self-organization offer the possibility of creating
well as for sensing and lighting. Step-index POFs are already used 3D structures simply and at low cost; for example, direct writing
in various technologies, and current research into co-extrusion uses nonlinear processes to ‘modify’ the polymer at the laser focus
offers the possibility of mass-producing GI-POFs in the not-too- to create a region of higher refractive index 66. Similarly, two-photon
distant future58. However, there are several problems that must be polymerization selectively polymerizes a material by exploiting the
addressed, including the increased cost associated with producing fact that two-photon absorption occurs only at the laser focus67. This
high-bandwidth GI-PF-POFs, and also the increase in attenuation allows the creation of high-resolution (micrometre-scale) 2D or 3D
over time as the polymer degrades. structures for use as on-chip waveguides, wavelength-division mul-
tiplexers, splitters and other passive devices. Lower-resolution 3D
Signal processing components structures such as polymer photonic crystals can also be achieved
Optical networks aim not only to transmit data using light, but also using the extremely low-cost self-organization technique68 or
to organize and process the signals all-optically (that is, without through one-photon polymerization71.
resorting to electrical processing), which complicates network lay- Another innovative application of organics is their use in large-
outs and creates bandwidth limitations. In such a role, both active area 3D displays, such as those demonstrated by Savaş et al.72, who
(amplifiers and modulators) and passive components are required. use a photorefractive polymer composite to create an updatable 3D

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REVIEW ARTICLE
holographic display capable of writing and displaying a different 3D
image every few minutes.
Amplifiers. Signal amplification is essential, owing to the ever-
increasing number of nodes found, for example, throughout short-
haul POF data networks in cars, homes and medical technology. The
input signal is split at each mode, so amplification is required to
maintain the signal strength throughout the network. A review of
organic amplifiers is given in ref. 73.
Studies using POFs doped with dyes and conjugated polymers
(in a similar way to their inorganic rare-earth-doped SOF-amplifier
cousins) have demonstrated amplification in short segments74–78.
However, the strong absorption and large gain coefficients of con-
jugated polymers suggest the use of compact solid-state amplifiers,
not necessarily in fibre form73. Recent work by Amarasinghe et al.,
for example, has demonstrated amplification of up to 32 dB in a
solid-state polymer slab waveguide made of a dilute co-polymer of
poly(9,9)-dioctylfluorene-co-benzothiadiazole (F8BT)79. This value
is similar to that obtained in erbium-doped silica fibre amplifiers
currently used in SOF networks. However, such silica fibre amplifi-
ers are difficult to integrate into POF networks because their ampli-
fication wavelengths are in the infrared rather than the visible, and
also because their fibre diameters are very small. Organic ampli-
fiers could be used instead, but their limited gain lifetimes and high
losses must be overcome before this can be achieved. For all-optical
amplification, the gain lifetime must be long enough to avoid syn-
chronizing the pump with the incoming signal. However, gain life-
times in organics, and particularly in polymers, are generally too
short 79 (typically <300 ps). CW pumping is the optimum solution
for avoiding synchronization of the pump and signal, but losses gen-
erally prevent this for compact solid-state polymer amplifiers, as for
the CW OSL operation described above.
Modulation and switching. Currently, logic operations are achieved
in optoelectronics using, for example, an electric field to modulate
light passing through an electro-optic modulator. Although lithium
niobate is typically the material of choice for electro-optic modu-
lators, the recent demonstration of large electro-optic coefficients
in polymers (140–170 pm V−1, which is more than six times that
of lithium niobate)80 may allow the realization of electro-optic
modulators operating at low voltages (∼1 V) and high bandwidths
(∼200 GHz)80,81.
All-optical modulation, which uses photons rather than elec-
trons to modulate a signal, is an active field of research despite the
fact that current all-optical modulator technologies are costly and
power-hungry. All-optical modulation should provide high on/off
ratios, fast recovery times and high repetition rates, with the lat-
ter demanding efficient energy dissipation. However, an efficient
solution has yet to be developed. Below we review potential materi-
als and mechanisms for all-optical modulation and switching, but
it is worth bearing in mind that these all require further jumps in
efficiency to become truly useful.
First, switching can be achieved in organic photonic crystals.
The periodicity and effective refractive index of photonic crystals
gives them an optical bandgap at which they are reflective. Changes
in effective refractive index inside the photonic crystal, induced
by nonlinear processes, can be used to change the bandgap of the
crystal and thus create a switch between reflection and transmis-
sion at a given wavelength82. This mechanism is important because
a small shift in bandgap results in large modulation. In general this
is a non-resonant process with an ultrafast response time (∼10 ps)82.
However, high intensities (>1 GW cm−2) are nevertheless important
to initiate switching.
A recent breakthrough was provided by Hu et al.83, who doped
microstructured polystyrene with Coumarin 153, an organic dye
molecule. Near-resonance excitation of the dye provided large
442
© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.160
changes in the photonic crystal’s refractive index (Δn ∼ 10−3), result-
ing in transmittance changes of up to 80% at a particular wavelength.
Although resonant excitation was used, a fast charge transfer from
the dye to the polystyrene led to rapid de-activation of the dye and
therefore recovery of the switch within a few picoseconds (Fig. 3a).
Furthermore, the on-resonance nature of the transition meant that
the required pump power density was only 110 kW cm−2. These
polystyrene photonic crystals were fabricated through focused ion-
beam etching — an expensive process that is difficult to scale up.
However, polystyrene photonic crystals can now be made from
cheap self-assembly techniques, offering a potentially low-cost
method of producing active components68,84.
The second mechanism discussed here is gain switching. In con-
jugated polymers, excitation forms a neutral bound electron–hole
pair known as an exciton (Box 1), and it is from this excited state
that amplification and lasing can occur. Photogeneration (or electri-
cal injection) of charges, with lifetimes typically between micro- and
milliseconds, cause gain quenching and are therefore detrimental to
lasing. However, by confining the excitations through polymer chain
isolation, or by using co-polymers or blends with specific isolated
low-energy sites, it is possible to form charges with lifetimes sig-
nificantly lower than 1 ps (refs 85,86). In addition, charges in some
systems are only generated by sequential excitation to higher-lying
states, thereby allowing direct optical control of charge generation.
Optical modulation of lasers has been demonstrated by opti-
cally generating charges with a gating pulse27,73,87,88 (Fig. 3b), before
which lasing operates normally. Arrival of the gating pulse excites
the polymer to higher-lying states, which causes charge generation
and gain quenching and thus effectively switches off the lasing.
Recovery of the lasing is dependent on the lifetime of the photo-
generated charges. Mróz et al. demonstrated laser modulation with
a potential recovery time of 30 ps by using rotaxanes to isolate con-
jugated polymer chains and confine excitations to a single polymer
chain27. Furthermore, by using gating pulses at the telecommuni-
cations wavelength of 1,300 nm, a DFB laser operating at 650 nm
was successfully modulated, thereby allowing direct optical conver-
sion between telecommunications (SOF) and data communications
(POF) networks88.
Amplifiers based on doped POFs, slab waveguides or optofluidic
chips have all demonstrated ultrafast gain modulation86,89. In each
case, recovery was dependent on 1D confinement of the excitation
along the chain. Optical control of amplification was observed in a
slab waveguide, for example, by using a co-polymer material to con-
fine the excitation to dispersed lower-energy sections of the chain89.
In addition, isolating conjugated polymers and oligomers in doped
POFs (Fig. 3c) or in solution in amplified spontaneous emission
optofluidic chips86 have proved a good way of achieving all-optical
gain switching with large on/off ratios and recovery within 1 ps.
Finally, the third mechanism to be discussed is switching in
hybrid systems. Hybrid devices, which exploit properties of both
organics and inorganics, are solving many problems related to both
fields. Silicon photonics, for example, is taking off in a big way
because of its low-cost-processing borrowed from integrated elec-
tronic circuits, as well as its ability to highly confine light (owing to
a large refractive index of n ∼ 3.5). However, silicon by itself cannot
perform all-optical active modulation without large gate intensities.
The solution has been to produce hybrid systems, in which highly
nonlinear organics are combined with silicon waveguides, exploit-
ing the best of both worlds3,4. In particular, by using a silicon slot
waveguide in which the electric field intensity is maximized in an
organic molecule known as DDMEBT — the active material — Koos
and co-workers achieved optical switching at speeds well under
500 fs (Fig. 3d), and used a four-wave mixing technique to demon-
strate time-division demultiplexing of a 170.8 Gb s−1 data stream to
42.7 Gb s−1. These measurements, and others3, demonstrate single-
frequency all-optical modulation well into the terahertz frequency
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NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.160 REVIEW ARTICLE
a Read-out circuit b 1.2
Au anode
(conceptual) Conjugated OPD pixels
Organics polymer film
Organic 1.0
photodiode Ag cathode Waveguide

Normalized photovoltage
array 0.8 Grating

Object 0.6 Inorganic LED

0.4

0.2
Focusing
Hemispherical lens
focal plane 1 cm 0.0
0 10 20 30 40
Pixel number

c 2.0 d 4.5
1.8
4.0
1.6
τ
Spectral responsivity (a.u.)

1.4 3.5

Photocurrent (pA)
1.2
3.0
1.0 19 fs
2.5
0.8

0.6 2.0
0.4
1.5
0.2

0.0 1.0
350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750 –60 –40 –20 0 20 40 60
Wavelength (nm) Delay (fs)

Figure 4 | Organic photodetectors. a, Top: schematic of the hemispherical organic photodetector focal plane array and its incorporation into a simple
imaging system. Bottom: photograph of such a set-up. b, Spectrum of an on-chip organic spectrometer as a function of pixel number. Inset shows the device
schematic, with photoluminescence waveguided to a grating and detected using an organic diode array49. OPD, organic photodiode. c, Organic colourimeter.
Photocurrent action spectra of the three organic photodiodes (dashed lines) in comparison with standard CIE 1931 colour-matching functions (solid lines).
d, Organic photodiode measures pulse duration with sub-20 fs resolution using an autocorrelation technique. Figure shows photocurrent vs time-delay
between two pulses (τ). Inset shows the schematic of such a set-up. Figure reproduced with permission from: a, ref. 98, © 2008 Elsevier; b, ref. 49, © 2009
EDP Sciences; c, ref. 104, © 2007 AIP; d, ref. 106, © 2009 RSC.

range. The use of hybrid systems offers significant advantages over
systems that are completely inorganic. However, the losses intro-
duced by the organic materials must be further reduced before such
systems are commercially viable.
Light detection
Owing to their large linear and nonlinear absorption cross-sections,
and also to their semiconductor and mechanical properties, organ-
ics are well-suited to provide potentially low-cost, large area and
flexible photodetectors for a wide variety of applications. Organic
solar cells, for example, are having much success at the moment.
However, they are covered in many reviews90–92 and so will not be
further discussed here. Instead we concentrate on photodetectors,
which have a greater relevance for applications in communication.
Recent work93 has demonstrated a photodetector with
a large spectral response (300–1,450 nm), high detectivity
(1012−1013 cm Hz0.5 W–1) and a linear dynamic range (>100 dB),
thus directly competing with silicon and InGaAs photodetectors.
This organic photodetector uses a bulk heterojunction structure
of (6,6)-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methylester (PC60M) with a low-
bandgap polymer poly(5,7-bis(4-decanyl-2-thienyl)-thieno(3,4-b)
diathiazole-thiophene-2,5) (PDDTT) as the active layer. The key to
obtaining such high detectivity was to significantly reduce the dark
current using electron and hole blocking layers, rather than to rely
on responsivity, which is relatively low (0.1–0.3 A W–1; refs 93,94)
compared with silicon (0.6 A W–1).
Detectivity, dynamic range, spectral range and responsivity are
all important figures of merit, and organic photodetectors fare well
here compared with common inorganic photodetectors. However,
lifetime, cost, speed and applicability are also important considera-
tions. Component lifetime, an issue that once plagued the organic
display industry, is a significant problem that must be seriously
tackled before organic photodetectors can be commercialized95.
Nevertheless, organic photodetectors can operate well into the
megahertz regime96, and are well-suited to applications requiring
large-area and non-planar devices. Such applications include the
use of flat-panel polymer photodetector matrices in X-ray imagers
for biomedical applications97, human eye mimicking vision sys-
tems98,99 (Fig. 4a) and also the placement of an organic photodetec-
tor directly on the cantilever of a near-field scanning microscope100.
The low-cost nature of organics also allows them to be used for dis-
posable on-chip sensors7,49,101–103 (Fig. 4b) or data communications96,
and their chemical tunability allows tunable photo-action spectra to
be obtained, which may be useful in colourimetry 104 (Fig. 4c).
In addition, multiphoton and multistep absorption transitions
can lead to a nonlinear response in photocurrent. The most evident
application of such nonlinear photodetectors, which rely on meas-
urements of intensity and not energy, is for pulse autocorrelation,

NATURE PHOTONICS | VOL 4 | JULY 2010 | www.nature.com/naturephotonics 443

© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

REVIEW ARTICLE
in which the photocurrent generated by two time-delayed space-
coincident pulses is detected. Measurements of time duration
below 20 fs (Fig. 4d), as well as measurements in the blue spec-
tral region, in which nonlinear crystals cannot operate, have been
demonstrated105,106. Nonlinear photodiodes also have application
in feedback loops and thresholders in optical limiting, frequency
mixing and optical computing 106. Specific research in develop-
ing good organic photoconductors with large nonlinear responses
has not yet been undertaken, which leaves hope for substantial
future improvement.
Future challenges
The requirement for any photonic device in optical computing,
data communications or telecommunications is to be robust, low
cost, high speed and easy to integrate. Organics generally offer low-
cost processing and are easy to integrate into existing and future
networks made either entirely from organics or a combination of
organics with inorganics. High-speed operation is, however, still
a problem. In active components, this is generally related to the
lifetimes of excited states and to the dissipation of energy — fast
operation requires short lifetimes and efficient energy dissipation.
Recent breakthroughs have demonstrated that quantum confine-
ment can be used to reduce the lifetimes involved in resonant
processes, thereby allowing large signals with short lifetimes to be
produced. However, high repetition rates will still require very effi-
cient energy dissipation.
Organic sources such as OLEDs14 and OSLs50 currently operate in
the megahertz regime, but higher rates are required for many appli-
cations. The speed of OLED operation is determined by the photo-
luminescence lifetime of the active layer, the resistance–capacitance
time constant of the device (which will be lower for smaller devices)
and the time required for charges to reach the recombination zone.
For faster switching rates, materials with high charge-carrier mobil-
ity and large photoluminous efficiencies are required. This is similar
to the requirements for electrically pumped lasers38 and, because
many groups are currently working in this field, we believe that sig-
nificantly faster switching rates will be achieved soon. However, as
switching rates increase, the corresponding increase in energy dis-
sipation will become important and must be addressed.
Organic semiconductor lasers and optical amplifiers require
short excited state lifetimes, particularly for states that quench
stimulated emission, to ensure recovery of the material between
pumping periods. One solution is to confine the excitations through
rotaxination of the conjugated polymer chains27, or by using den-
drimers and spiro-groups40,46. In addition, triplet quenchers could
be incorporated to quickly return excitation to the ground state48.
Although the dramatic increase in efficiency and reduction in las-
ing threshold of OSLs has certainly been important for reducing the
amount of energy required in OSL systems, their inefficient energy
dissipation at high repetition rates is a problem that has yet to be
addressed. We estimate that for switching rates of ∼10 GHz, assum-
ing a degradation threshold of 0.2 mW cm−2 (from studies into a
fluorene co-polymer under nanosecond-pulsed excitation), the
threshold energy to be reached is below 1 pJ cm−2.
Organic photodetectors based on standard organic materials
also operate well into the megahertz regime, with the speed being
limited by the size of the device, the lifetime of any charge-transfer
states at the donor–acceptor interface107 and, importantly, the charge
carrier mobility 108. Recent work has demonstrated, for example,
photodetectors made from graphene that operate at speeds of up
to (and possibly beyond) 40 GHz, with this speed mainly due to the
extremely high charge carrier mobility 109.
Components that optically modulate light signals now operate
well into the gigahertz or even potentially the terahertz regime.
In these systems, resonant processes with excitation confinement 27,85
or fast charge transfer 83 offer greater efficiency and lower pump
444
© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
NATURE PHOTONICS DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.160
powers than non-resonant processes83. However, demultiplexing
into the gigahertz regime has been demonstrated only for non-reso-
nant hybrid systems1. The resonant processes will need to be tested
in terms of their efficient energy dissipation and lifetime. New tech-
niques for cooling may be required, and thus all-optical switching
processes remain a future prospect.
Biomimetics is an important stimulus for inspiring innovation in
terms of synthesizing new molecules, fabricating new materials or
exploiting physical phenomena in new devices. The field of organics
is at the forefront of this revolution, with the number of researchers
in the field, new spin-off industries, patents and papers all growing
rapidly. In terms of photonics, organics promise solutions to many
problems. On the one hand they are important for applications
requiring low cost, large area or non-planar surfaces. On the other
hand, their large nonlinear cross-sections are useful for all-optical
switching or in nonlinear photodiodes. However, there are still sev-
eral problems that must be overcome to enable full exploitation of
organic photonics: (1) reduce losses in organic lasers to allow CW
amplification and electrical injection OSLs; (2) understand and over-
come the requirement for efficient energy dissipation to allow opera-
tion of active components at high repetition rates; and (3) increase
the lifetimes of the materials involved, as was done in the organic
display industry. Despite these problems, organics are already mak-
ing their mark on industry, and the broad range of applications and
possibilities, from human-eye-mimicking systems to high-speed
optical computing, make organic photonics a very exciting field.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge financial support from EU projects 026365-POLYCOM,
248052-PHOTO-FET and Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship (JC). JC also
thanks D. Narayana Rao and his group for generous hospitality and useful discussions.
Additional information
The authors declare no competing financial interests. Reprints and permissions
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Correspondence and requests should be addressed to J.C.
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