Optical materials

Introduction: Electromagnetic radiation, atomic structure, light and matter interaction (reflection, refraction, n, absorption, transmission and scattering), properties and constant of optical materials (dispersion & Fresnel equations), spectroscopy measurements and optical instruments (spectrometers, lasers, microscopes, grating)), processing of optical materials (polishing, molding, crystal growing, wet chemistry, CVD), design of optical systems.

Optical materials classes: Crystalline materials, Ceramics materials, semiconducting materials (II-V, Si, Ge), glasses (silica, fluoride, chalcogenide), optical polymers (organic & inorganic) materials by sol-gel technology, dyes (organic & inorganic), nanomaterials and quantum dots, principal of material engineering of optical materials (dopants, impurities and defects).

Applications: Thin films, optical fibers, waveguides, laser media, nonlinear crystals and nonlinear materials, LED, solar cells, detectors, optical adhesive materials, filters and optical components.

Course description

The primary objective of the course is to provide an understanding of the basic optical properties of common used optical materials such as crystalline materials, ceramic materials semiconductors glasses and optical polymers. The student will be exposed to a quantitative interpretation of the fundamental of the interaction of light and transparent optical materials as well as general information on the applications of optical materials in optical engineering. We analyze the effect of generation and propagation of light in a matrix. We also study how fabrication methods impact the performance of optical materials. Examples in this class cover a wide range of applications including optical coating, laser gain media, nonlinear optics materials, advanced optical polymers and sol-gel technology. A major objective of the course is to learn how to apply course knowledge to solve real-world problems in a variety of optical engineering applications.