Silica Hybrid Sol–Gel Materials with Unusually High Concentration of Pt–Organic Molecular Guests: Studies of Luminescence and Nonlinear Absorption of Light

The development of new photonic materials is a key step toward improvement of existing optical devices and for the preparation of a new generation of systems. Therefore synthesis of photonic hybrid materials with a thorough understanding and control of the microstructure-to-properties relationships is crucial. In this perspective, a new preparation method based on fast gelation reactions using simple dispersion of dyes without strong covalent bonding between dye and matrix has been developed. This new sol-gel method is demonstrated through synthesis of monolithic siloxane-based hybrid materials highly doped by various platinum(II) acetylide derivatives. Concentrations of the chromophores as high as 400 mM were obtained and resulted in unprecedented optical power limiting (OPL) performance at 532 nm of the surface-polished solids. Static and time-resolved photoluminescence of the prepared hybrid materials were consistent with both OPL data and previous studies of similar Pt(II) compounds in solution. The impacts of the microstructure and the chemical composition of the matrix on the spectroscopic properties, are discussed.