Sol-gel derived hybrid inorganic-organic nanocomposites for optics

In the course of the recent development of new sol-gel derived materials for optics, organically modified metal oxide matrices have widely demonstrated their great potential. Most of the work performed in this area has been concentrated on embedding organic or organo-metallic chromophores in an oxide network to make optical devices. The main advantages of the use of hybrid organic—inorganic nanocomposites result from their high versatility in offering a wide range of possibilities to fabricate tailor-made materials in terms of their chemical and physical properties, and macroscopic shape molding. Such materials emerging in this field are known as ‘sol-gel photonics’. There have been some striking examples of the use of room temperature processed hybrids to design materials with emission, absorption, second-order nonlinear optical and photochromic properties.