Sol-gel glass from organic modified silicates for optics applications

A room temperature sol-gel process starting from tetraethyl orthosilicate and triethoxy-vinyl silane is used to obtain dye doped organic modified glass, whose composition and optical properties are investigated by means of transmittance measurements in the VIS-IR range. Experimental conditions as the precursor ratio, the water amount, and the thermal treatment, are optimized to avoid the guest molecules degradation and to obtain good optical quality thin films, able to be micropatterned by embossing lithography. The photoluminescence of the patterned films, imaged on a mum scale, is analysed by means of a CCD camera and compared with the emission of the unstructured films.