When it comes to 3D printing, the sky is the limit. As 3D printing technology continues to advance, applications can be as far reaching as airplane and automobile parts to medical devices and even anatomically correct, biocompatible models. Although 3D printing technology is developing at a rapid pace, the technology itself is not new. It emerged in the 1980s as a means of creating rapid prototypes. In recent years the applications for 3D printed models have evolved with the available hardware, software, and printable materials. Evolving technology, paired with the creative and innovative minds of scientists, engineers, and physicians, has been the launching pad for developments within 3D printing technology specific to healthcare. One way 3D printing technology is poised to create better patient outcomes is in creating an anatomically and patient-specific models to aid in surgery and medical procedures. With the capability to 3D print patient-specific models, more acc
Refractive index is a measure of how fast light passes through a given medium. Scientists and engineers who have harnessed this property — along with a related property called the extinction coefficient — have revolutionized the telecommunications industry in the past century.
But making transparent materials with tunable refractive indexes that don’t lose photons along the way has not been easy. Now, Natalie at Imperial College in London and coworkers have reported in a journal article “a hybrid material that can be readily produced in water via a one-pot synthesis directly from commercially available, low-cost precursors.”
Their synthesis makes a hybrid polymer/inorganic material that results in thin films, dielectric filters, and lenses with tailored dimensionality, processability, and functionality writes Jenny Mahoney in Materials Views.
Crystalline inorganics have traditionally been used to provide a high refractive index, but they make the material opaque, so Natalie’s group tried amorphous hydrates. Stingelin told Mahoney:
This not only prevents light scattering and allows us to prepare low-loss structures, but also permits us to adjust the hybrids formulation by incorporation of other heavy metals into the titanium oxide hydrates.
To make the hybrid material for fabricating thin films and lenses, the group mixed titanium chloride hydrolysis solutions with aqueous solutions of poly(vinyl alcohol).
Mahoney explains additional tunability:
The refractive index can be controlled and adjusted post-processing via thermal annealing and irradiation with high-intensity UV-light for in-plane patterning and creation of waveguides. In fact, bringing a hot wire into contact with the film creates a local refractive index contrast capable of confining light within the annealed segment, comparable to commercial waveguides.
“Implications for the optics community are substantial,” including applications from lighting to spectroscopy to medicine, Mahoney writes. Stingelin listed numerous potential applications ranging including flexible, low-cost, loss-free mirror systems; solution-processable planar lenses and concentrators; and solar collector systems for organic and/or inorganic photovoltaics.
Mahoney notes:
Future endeavors include ‘alloying’ with other metal oxides to broaden the index of refraction and functionalities of these hybrids, producing both 2-D and 3-D photonic structures for optical waveguides, and exploiting titanium oxide hydrates in applications other than high-refractive index hybrids.
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