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Abstract: Exciting advances have been made in recent years which suggest that organic materials are now becoming practical for use in photonic device applications. Among the most noteworthy findings are:

• Demonstration of high luminance organic light emitting devices consisting of heterojunctions of two different organic molecular solids or polymers. These devices emit with high quantum efficiency in the red, green and blue spectral regions. Due to the particular long lifetimes of the molecular organic devices, they have promise for application to a wide range of flat panel display applications.
• Demonstration of ultrafast polymer optical modulators.
• Demonstration of transistors based entirely on thin films of organic molecular compounds or polymers.
• Growth of highly ordered van der Waals-bonded organic thin films by the ultrahigh vacuum process of organic molecular beam deposition (OMBD). Order is attained even in the absence of lattice matching between the film and the substrate. This has led to the realization of low defect density heterojunctions consisting of material combinations with widely different crystal structures, as well as to the demonstration of the first organic multiple quantum well structures by OMBD. These interesting structures share properties common to both insulators and semiconductors, suggesting that new and useful physical phenomena can now be engineered into the thin films.
• Demonstration of the integration of several different organic optical devices with inorganic semiconductor devices such as Si, GaAs and InP. These include organic/inorganic heterojunction detectors, organic waveguide-coupled detectors, couplers, and modulators.

Speaker's Biography: Stephen Forrest graduated from the University of California with a B.A. degree in physics in 1972, and from the University of Michigan with a MSc and PhD degree in physics in 1974 and 1979, respectively. From there, he went to Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill) where he did both fundamental and applied research and development of photodetectors for use in long wavelength optical communications systems. In 1982, he became supervisor of the Integrated Optoelectronic Devices and Circuits group at Bell Laboratories. There, he worked on arrays of emitters and detectors, and integrated optical receivers. In 1985, Prof. Forrest joined the faculty of the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California where he continued his research on optoelectronic integrated circuits, as well as on a new class of optoelectronic materials: crystalline organic semiconductors. From 1989 - 1992, Prof. Forrest served as the Director of the National Center for Integrated Photonic Technology: a consortium of five universities including USC, Columbia, Kent State University, MIT and UCLA. In 1992, Prof. Forrest joined Princeton University as the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Electrical Engineering and the Princeton Materials Institute, and as Director of Princeton's Advanced Technology Center for Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials (ATC/POEM). Prof. Forrest has served as Associate Editor to the Journal of Quantum Electronics and Photonics Technology Letters, has served on the OSA Technical Council, and is on the LEOS Board of Governors. In 1996-97, he was the recipient of the IEEE/LEOS Distinguished Lecturer Award. He is a member of the APS, MRS and the OSA, and is a Fellow of the IEEE.

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