The sol-gel process has opened the possibility of obtaining glasses and ceramics at low temperatures, such that enable the incorporation of organic molecules and metal complexes inside these matrices. Since the library of molecules is very large, the ability to merge any component of this library into glasses, has opened the way to many applications all accross chemistry, physics, materials sciences, and biological secinces. A particular domain that has gained from this ability is the general field of interaction with light, namely optics and photophysics. In the lecture I will describe some contributions we have made to this field. Specific examples include (as time will allow):
* Electrochemical methods for the preparation of optical sol-gel thin films
* Optically transparent, conductive, flexible sol-gel films
* Hybrid polymer/sol-gel submicron luminescent particles
* Core-[sol-gel shell] optical filter sub-micron particles
* Sol-gel optical chemical sensors
* Sol-gel photochromic and light-gate materials
* A sol-gel approach to solar light storgae