Microstructure and optical properties of methylmethacrylate-modified silica hybrid glasses and thin films

Silica glasses modified with organic materials offer many new, easily tailorable properties that can lead to various applications. In this work, silica-methylmethacrylate hybrid glasses have been studied. Transparent gels in the form of bulk glass and thin layers were prepared by a one-step sol-gel process. Thermal decomposition of the gels was studied by differential thermal analysis (DTA) and infrared spectroscopy (IR). Microstructure and optical properties of the glasses with different content of methacrylate were established by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and UV-VIS spectroscopy.