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Enhanced Electro-Optic Response Of Layered Composite Materials
Recent research has stressed the importance of the fabrication of composite structures as a means of obtaining materials with desirable optical properties. One such approach is to fabricate nano-composite materials. These materials are inhomogeneous on a distance scale much smaller than an optical wavelength. For this reason the optical properties of such materials can be described by "effective medium theories" in which "effective" optical constants (such as refractive indices and nonlinear susceptibilities) are obtained by performing suitable volume averages of the local optical constants. Nonetheless, nano-composite materials can possess remarkable optical properties which can be quite different from those of their constituents.
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