Nonlinear optical studies of organic monolayers

Second-order nonlinear optical effects are forbidden in a medium with inversion symmetry, but are necessarily allowed at a surface where the inversion summary is broken. They are often sufficiently strong so that a submonolayer perturbation of the surface can be readily detected. They can therefore be used as effective tools to study monolayers adsorbed at various interfaces. We discuss here a number of recent experiments in which optical second harmonic generation (SHG) and sum-frequency generation (SFG) are employed to probe and characterize organic monolayers. 15 refs., 5 figs