Polymers combine the possibility of easy processing with an infinite potential of functionalization. They have long been used as passive materials for components in electronics and electrooptics. They can be conductors or semiconductors, ferroelectrics and can exhibit interesting properties such as photoconductivity, piezo or pyroelectricity or nonlinear optical properties. As a consequence they are now used for merging active components in such fields of electrooptics as displays, sensors or modulators for optical signal treatment. This paper intends to review the properties and applications of some recent polymers in the field of electrooptics. In the first part of this paper we describe the properties of amorphous copolymers with a pending group with large hyperpolarizability. These amorphous copolymers show high electrooptical coefficients and we have used these copolymers for the realisation of an electrooptic modulator. Spatial light modulator used for pattern recognition formed with the association of a polysilane and a liquid crystal cell is also described. The second part deals with ferroelectric polymers and their pyroelectric properties. We describe the realisation and performance of an IR pyroelectric sensor using copolymers of polyvinylidene fluoride-ethylene trifluoride. In the third part, we describe the results of our work on polymer dispersed liquid crystals (PDLC), their preparation by photopolymerisation and their performances for displays.