Preparation and properties of laser dye-ORMOSIL composites

Various organic laser dyes have been incorporated into organically modified silicates (ORMOSILs), derived from polydimethylsiloxane and tetraethoxysilane. These sol-gel derived PT-ORMOSILs proved to be good hosts for the laser dyes in terms of stability and optical gain. Some of the dyes, for example, Rhodamine 610, Rhodamine 620, and Rhodamine 640, have shown higher stability in PT-ORMOSILs than in methyl alcohol. The stability of Rh6G in a PT-ORMOSIL is 76% higher in dry nitrogen than in air, because of the contribution of oxygen and/or moisture to the dye degradation processes. The fluorescence intensity for Rh610 was enhanced by a factor of 3.9 as the temperature was cooled from room temperature to 77 K.

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