High Refractive Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Films Prepared by Low Water Sol-Gel and UV-Irradiation Processes.

Organic-inorganic hybrid sols (Ti-O-Si precursor) were first synthesized by the sol-gel method at low addition of water, and were then employed to prepare a highly refractive hybrid optical film. This film was obtained by blending the Ti-O-Si precursor with 2-phenylphenoxyethyl acrylate (OPPEA) to perform photo-polymerization by ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. Results show that the film transparency of poly(Ti-O-Si precursor-co-OPPEA) film is higher than that of a pure poly(Ti-O-Si precursor) film, and that this poly(Ti-O-Si precursor-co-OPPEA) hybrid film exhibits a high transparency of ~93.7% coupled with a high refractive index (n) of 1.83 corresponding to a thickness of 2.59 µm.