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Langmuir-Blodgett films are commonly subject to specific defects called striations which are associated with meniscus instability during deposition. In the present paper these have been characterized by observing their effect on the coupling of evanescent optical modes into the surface modes associated with metallic silver. The reflectivity as a function of incidence angle has been measured and fitted to a theoretical model and the spatial distribution of the defects has been directly imaged. The striations are shown to be exactly a bilayer thicker than the rest of the film.

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When a transparent layer of sufficient thickness is suitably coated on both sides with metal, the structure supports onedimensionally bound optical modes which propagate in two dimensions but which can be detected externally in a very simple manner. We show that this configuration can be used to determine the optical constants of the layer.

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