A Widely Tunable Refractive Index in a Nanolayered Photonic Material

Abstract

A class of composite polymer films is described in which the refractive index can be varied by simple mechanical forces. The films are comprised of 1024 alternating layers of an elastomer and a glassy polymer. When the layer spacing is much less than the wavelength of the probe light, these materials behave as effective medium composites. The layer thickness of the elastomer component and thus the effective index of the composite can be varied by compressing the composite.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 03, 2004
Accession Number
ADA523187

Entities

People

  • Aditya Ranade
  • Anne Hiltner
  • Eric Baer
  • Huiwen Tai
  • James S. Shirk
  • Marie Sandrock
  • Michael Wiggins

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Advanced Materials
  • Alkenes
  • Composite Materials
  • Copyrights
  • Elastomers
  • Electronic Mail
  • Engineered Materials
  • Fabrication
  • Films
  • Materials
  • Materials Processing
  • Optical Properties
  • Physics
  • Plasmonic Metamaterials
  • Polymeric Films
  • Polymers
  • Refractive Index

Readers

  • Fluid Dynamics.
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.
  • Polymer Science and Engineering.

Technology Areas

  • Space