Photo structurable glasses

A special-purpose photo-structured glass called FOTURAN (available from Mik-roglas Chemtech GmbH - www.mikroglas.com), which is based on lithium aluminum silicate and is especially useful for creating microchannels and related structures with high aspect ratios. 

Very recently J.D. Mills et al. [19] have written a nano-structured Bragg reflection grating within the volume of silica glass using focused infrared laser light. Such photo-induced structures have potential for a variety of photonics applications, including information storage. 

Figure 8 Scanning electron micrograph of silica-gel thin layer formed on the inner wall of capillary tubing. There are three parts in the photo. The right part is a section of fused-silica capillary glass body, and the center is a cross-sectional view of a section of silica-gel thin layer foamed on the inner wall, thickness ca. 0.3 pm. On the surface of the silica-gel layer, two-thirds of the photo, there are a lot of holes. From the photo, the silica-gel layer has a nano-cell structure.

Figure 3.3 Deposits of 1,3-jum polystyrene latex particles on an 8.7- tm glass fiber mounled normal to an aero.sol flow and exposed for increasing periods of time. The air velocity was 13.8 cm/sec, and the particle concentration wa.s about 1000 cm . Photos by C, Billings (1966). The principal mechanism of deposition wa.s probably direct interception. Fracial-like structures develop as the pcirticles deposit.

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