Ronald J. Mosso

Synthesis of nanoscale optical materials using nanoparticle manufacturing (NPM) technology

Current development of optical network component devices has increased demand for various optical and opto-electronic materials for a wide range of applications such as switches, waveguides, amplifiers, Bragg gratings, splitters, isolators circulators, lasers and detectors. Furthermore, low cost manufacture of component devices demands higher and higher integration of individual components onto a small, planar foot print. One of the major issues with optical integration is that various optical functionalities come from materials with different compositions. As a result, it is highly desirable to have a means to produce high quality optical materials with various compositions, and to deposit them onto a common substrate. We present in this paper a novel nanoscale materials synthesis method to produce optical materials in nanoscale particulate form, which can subsequently deposited onto a substrate at a high deposition rate. Further treatment of these materials on the substrate can be used to transform these nanoscale particle building block into dense solids to achieve optical functional properties such as optical transparency, amplification or UV sensitivity.