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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
Presently commercial optical fiber links experience an explosive growth. On the other hand, the integration of optical functions on a single substrate (“Integrated Optical Device”) is still mostly limited to the R & D-laboratories. Only Mach-Zehnder modulators, made from ferroelectric crystals, have found commercial applications so far. The development phase of the integrated optical devices, based on bulk crystalline LiNbO3, is now covering a time span of nearly 30 years. In comparison, the development of the thin film growth of optical oxide ferroelectrics or of tailored optical polymers is just a few years old and we are still at the beginning of the learning curve.