Nanoscale chemistry and processing of multifunctional composites for nanophotonics and biophotonics

Multifunctional nanostructured materials and composites are of considerable interest for photonics, optoelectronics and biophotonics. This paper will focus on three topics. In the first part of the paper, we will focus on silica encapsulated multifunctional nanoparticles. These particles show enhanced optical properties as well as photo, chemical and thermal stability. In the second part of the paper, we investigate the Er³⁺ sol-gel multicomponent silica glass prepared with nanostructure control for 1.55 μm amplification. These glasses demonstrate the longest reported lifetime in sol-gel glasses to date, which we attribute to the reduction of the hydroxyl content in the glass. The third part of the paper discusses our work on photonic crystals.