Acentric Nanostructured Assembly as a Strategy for the Design of Organic Electrooptic Materials

The rational utilization of the paradigms of self-assembly and self-organization, essential requisites for the building up of the architectural complexity found in natural systems, is becoming an unavoidable strategy in the world of nanosciences. Recent developments in the field of organic materials for second-order nonlinear optics have focused in the recent past not only towards the optimization of the molecular engineering translating into ultrahigh molecular hyperpolarizabilities, but also, and more fundamentally, towards the realization of acentric assemblies of such chromophores into nanomaterials with high electrooptic responses. Selected, recent examples dealing with these concepts are discussed.