The Polymer Society of Korea

Abstract

Optical glass is an essential material to modern society due to the need for transparent, robust, moldable solid media for optics, telecommunication, construction, transportation and optoelectronic devices. Optical glass now spans a wide range of refractive indices (n, or RI), spectral windows of optical transparency, and refractive index dispersion, quantified by the Abbe number (V_d), where a high V_d is desirable as it indicates low chromatic aberration in the VIS-IR spectrum.  Despite the ubiquity of inorganic glasses (e.g., fused silica, crown glass, sapphire), the high density and associated cost of these materials has required the development of lightweight, inexpensive, synthetic polymers for high volume, commodity plastic optics and ultra-large windows, especially for a burgeoning number of high volume consumer electronics applications (e.g., smartphones). The development of low cost, high refractive index polymers for plastic optics and photonic device applications is an important frontier for new polymer chemistry.  We will discuss the importance of classical industrial commodity optical polymers for use as plastic glass, along with our decades long development with elemental sulfur and sulfur petrochemicals to a new class of high refractive index, plastic glass.  The development of two new polymerizations, inverse vulcanizations and sulfenyl chloride inverse vulcanization will be discussed along with fabrication of high quality plastic glass.