groups are subsequently bonded as coupling units to the carrier and form extremely thin often monomolecular layers such silanizations of different generally inorganic oxides are widely used in practice and are quite familiar to a person skilled in the art examples of known carrier materials are aluminum oxide titanium dioxide silicon dioxide glass or quartz or mixed oxides such as for example indium tin oxide ito in the applications according to the invention for optical or electro optical devices glass or optionally a carrier coated with an electrode for example a glass sheet coated with indium tin oxide ito are particularly important as carrier materials for the application the silane derivatives are used predominantly as solutions in an inert solvent depending on the reactivity of the silane group a large number of different solvents may be used such as for example benzene toluene hexane etc or in the case of the less reactive alkoxysilanes also alcohols such as methanol ethanol and the like the subsequent coating can be carried out for example by immersing the cleaned carrier in the solution by spin coating or by other coating techniques after volatilization of the solvent from the carrier layer the silane group is coupled to the carrier generally by heating the impregnated carrier depending on the reactivity the unbound silane fractions can then be washed out with solvents the layers which were produced from silane derivatives of the formula i or from mixtures containing silane derivatives of the formula i in this or an analogous manner can be dimerized by exposure to linearly polarized light by spatially selective irradiation of the molecular units of the formula i coupled to the carrier very specific regions of a surface can now be oriented and at the.