Tristan S. Kleine†, Roland Himmelhuber¥, Robert A. Norwood¥, Jeffrey Pyun† †Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Arizona, 1306 E. University Blvd., Tucson, AZ, 85721, ¥College of Optical Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721. Our group has been heavily involved in the investigation of ultra-high refractive index materials based on chalcogenide hybrid inorganic organic polymers (CHIPs), and while these materials exhibit some of the highest refractive indices in literature, they cannot be polymerized by controlled methods. Our more recent efforts attempt to address this issue by designing and synthesizing monomers bearing chalcogen units, but that can be polymerized by conventional CRP methods such as RAFT. In doing so, it was deemed necessary to synthesize a protected, thiol-bearing monomer which could be carried through the polymerization, and was necessary to afford control, but that could be quantitatively removed after polymerization and afford the desired high refractive index of n = 1.643 (at 623 nm) after deprotection . It should be noted that the radical polymerization of a similar monomer, phenyl vinyl sulfide, has been reported in literature, but with poor control via RAFT and that the radical polymerization of an analogous monomer, phenyl vinyl sulfone, does not occur to high degree of polymerization. A unique advantage to the design of this new polymer is the crosslinking event that occurs rapidly after deprotection allowing for the material to act as a photoresist. We have successfully demonstrated this capability and are exploring the material’s application in integrated optical devices.

Controlled radical polymerization of t-BoC protected styrenic sulfides: Chalcogenide hybrid inorganic/organic polymers (CHIPs) with phototunable refractive indices for integrated optics

254th National Meeting (2017)

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