Abstract

Polymers and glasses doped with small semiconductor clusters represent a new class of materials. These materials are interesting for two reasons. First, the size of the semicondutor clusters can be controlled to vary from a few to hundreds of Å. This provides a vehicle to study the transition of a semiconductor from molecular to bulk.¹ Secondly, by doping polymers or glasses with these small semiconductor clusters, utilizing their large resonant third order nonlinearity, new optically nonlinear composite materials can be prepared^2,3. These semiconductor composites can have many advantages, other than the typical ones associated with composites such as processing flexibility, mechanical stability,…etc.

© 1988 Optical Society of America