Optical materials by a modified sol-gel nanoparticle process

Abstract

The use of sol-gel derived nanoparticles leads to interesting new materials and systems for optics. The basic principle, to combine transparent matrices with nanoparticles in sizes below remarkable scattering losses opens up new material technologies. The processing is almost as simple as sol-gel processing, and the use of polymerizable nanoparticle even leads to high performance coatings by using simple polymer techniques.