Lightwave Logic has received increasing interest in using organic polymers as optical filters due to the absorptive capability of our Perkinamine™ based organic polymers. An optical filter made with our materials would have the ability to filter unwanted light frequencies with extremely fast reaction times. This could have very high utility in military applications like protecting a satellite from a laser attack–or even from light emitted following a nuclear explosion.
The following diagram demonstrates in simple form how an optical limiter works. It shows both low intensity and bright, high intensity light entering the limiter from the left-hand side. The limiter prevents a bright light pulse (e.g., from a laser weapon) from transiting the device and therefore acts to protect the downstream sensor (or a human operator’s eye) from damage by the very bright light.
An optical filter is a different application that can remove a desired wavelength from a spectrum of light waves.
The picture on the right shows a waveguide (white line on the right) with the blue, green, yellow and red arrows moving through it. Because the ring and the waveguide are doped with a specific Perkinamine™ organic polymer, an evanescent field becomes activated between the two structures. In this case, the yellow wavelength jumps through the waveguide into the ring resonator and to the other side. The device has filtered the specific wavelength of choice.
The flexibility of Perkinamine™ organic optical polymers can enable a degree of control over which wavelength to eliminate from the spectrum. This ability to tune a material represents a major competitive advantage.
City University of New York, in partnership with Lightwave Logic, has already demonstrated that they can make very small structures that can be used in these types of applications:
The ring structure (left) was manufactured and imaged using electron beam lithography at Brookhaven National Laboratories. It is actually a hollow structure that is coated on the inside with one of the company’s Perkinamine™ chromophores. This ring structure could be made into the resonator structure that is pictured above. The rectangular shape on the right is also hollow and coated with one of the company’s polymers. These structures function as a proof of concept to demonstrate that Perkinamine™ chromophores can be successfully deposited on substrates. The most important consideration from a competitive perspective is that:
- Lightwave Logic’s organic polymer materials can survive the intense temperatures needed to make devices using semiconductor processes. In this case, 170C with minimal loss of optical properties.
- The company knows of no other organic optical nonlinear polymer material that can survive these types of temperatures.
