NOVEL, ORGANICALLY DOPED, SOL-GEL-DERIVED MATERIALS FOR PHOTONICS - MULTIPHASIC NANOSTRUCTURED COMPOSITE MONOLITHS AND OPTICAL FIBERS

Sol-gel-processed organic-inorganic hybrid materials combine the merit s of inorganic glass and organic molecules, and are therefore a class of materials with good potential for photonics, In this review, two ap proaches which have shown promising results for producing useful mater ials for photonics are described: (i) a novel way to fabricate organic ally doped, multiphasic nanostructured composite monoliths and (ii) a method of fabrication of organically doped, sol-gel-derived optical fi bers, For each approach, the preparation process is presented, togethe r with selected applications such as multidye solid-state tunable lase r multiphasic optical power limiter, a micron-scale chemical-sensing a nd biosensing fibers and solid-state dye-doped fiber lasers. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.