Optical and electro-optical devices from organically doped sol-gel materials

Within the large list of organically doped sol-gel materials with optical or electro-optical applications, two representative examples shall be presented: first, gel-glass dispersed liquid crystal (GDLC) devices with electro-optical properties related to an adequate sol-gel chemical processing for trapping microdroplets of nematogenic organic compounds (i.e. liquid crystals, LCs), and second, photochromic-doped sol-gel materials attached to optical fibers, for which, the properties of the light throughput and the response time may be modified by the device features.