Photonic devices, molecular-scale

The FPI principle can also be used to develop thin-film-coating-based chemical sensors. For example, a thin layer of zeolite film has been coated to a cleaved endface of a single-mode fiber to form a low-finesse FPI sensor for chemical detection. Zeolite presents a group of crystalline aluminosilicate materials with uniform subnanometer or nanometer scale pores. Traditionally, porous zeolite materials have been used as adsorbents, catalysts, and molecular sieves for molecular or ionic separation, electrode modification, and selectivity enhancement for chemical sensors. Recently, it has been revealed that zeolites possess a unique combination of chemical and optical properties. When properly integrated with a photonic device, these unique properties may be fully utilized to develop miniaturized optical chemical sensors with high sensitivity and potentially high selectivity for various in situ monitoring applications. 

The biaryls are useful in rational designing functional molecules and materials. The large steric hindrance and the semirigid structure with restrict rotation provided various functional biaryls, such as arylporphyrins [162,170], molecular-scale motors rotate by chemical power or light [73,163], a photoswitchable electron transfer aromatic compounds for the design of molecular photonic devices [171,172],a stable thioaminyl radicals [173],phenylnitroxide-substitut-ed Zn(II) porphyrins [174], and polycyclic aromatic compounds [175-177]. 

---