Remarkable New Optical Plastic from the Pyun and Norwood Groups

A new landmark paper in Advanced Functional Materials from the Pyun and Norwood groups at the University of Arizona on a remarkable new, optical plastic, Disulfide Glass (DSG).  

This article is open access: https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adfm.202422569

This new polymeric glass rivals or exceeds the optical transparency of the very best optical polymer to date, PMMA-Plexiglass, while also having a high refractive index. This low-cost polymer thermoset is highly amenable to manufacturing of thick, defect-free optical glass, while retaining excellent thermomechanical properties.  DSG is highly amenable to manufacturing by diamond turn machine to fabricate high-quality precision optics in the form of plano-convex lenses or complex prisms. Finally, versatile chemistry enables the fabrication of solution processable forms of DSG, which were made into highly transparency, low-loss slab waveguides and demonstrated to be excellent negative tone photoresists. The work is at the nexus of sulfur petrochemicals, commodity optical polymers, plastic optics, consumer eye ware and polymer photonics.  Special thanks to our collaborative partners in the Wie Group at Hanyang University, the Yang Group at A*Star in Singapore and YNDK for tremendous work on thermomechanical characterization, toxicity studies and fabrication of optical/photonic components, along with support from NSF.