Direct laser writing of photonic nanostructures

Abstract

In this work, we prepare and optically characterize novel, titanium-containing hybrid materials that can be structured three-dimensionally using two-photon polymerization. We investigate the effect on the structurability of the increase of titanium isopropoxide and methacrylic acid content in this photosensitive composite. We show that while it is possible to make transparent thin films with titanium isopropoxide molar content as high as 90%, three-dimensional structures can be made only when the titanium isopropoxide molar content is less than 50%. We measure the refractive index of different titanium isopropoxide: methacrylic acid concentrations in the composite. We show a linear increase of the composite refractive index with titanium isopropoxide concentration, while the increase of the methacrylic acid content does not it.