[Optics_Man]

Hi,
I'm interested in making a waveguide out of some liquid chemicals. I need a solution with a very high refractive index, and very high optical clarity in the visible part of the spectrum. I'd like to have an clarity of about .01dB/cm. I've noticed that organic compounds containing iodine seem to be very dense and have good polarizabilities. But they seem to have poor optical clarity. Does anybody know how to obtain such a liquid or what types of solvents and solutes I could look for or try?
Thanks!
Eli

[Corribus]

What are you looking to do?

[Optics_Man]

What are you looking to do?

Hi, I'm looking to make a waveguide out of liquid. I thought it would be a cool idea because it's much easier to make highly homogeneous liquids than solids, which take all kinds of special procedures to eliminate grain boundaries, cracks, bubbles and impurities. I work in an optics lab, and I'm just playing around with the idea. I've been doing research all day on different halogenated organic compounds. I guess iodine is naturally the most polarizable due to the periodic trends. But they all seem to suffer from a yellowish color which could never du for a broadband waveguide. First of all, do you know where this yellow color comes from? Say in iodobenzene or iodonaphalene? I can only seem to find UV spectra of these molecules, do you think it's an intrinsic absorbance band, like the homo-lumo gap?

Thanks!
Eli

[Corribus]

Benzene itself is transparent in the visible because it absorbs in the UV. However substituted benzenes are often slightly yellow because the absorption band is shifted slightly into the blue (blue is absorbed, leaving red/yellow). Naphthalene will be even worse.

You need optical transparency over the entire visible range?

As I recall, my PhD lab collaborated with a group that made optical waveguides out of some of our compounds, dissolved at high concentrations in DMSO. But those were intended for the NIR, not visible. I'm not sure what people use for the visible region, but I'm sure it's been done.

[Enthalpy]

Here a table of refractive indices and, for some compounds, absorption/dispersion/etc
http://refractiveindex.info/?shelf=organic&book=carbon_tetrachloride&page=Kedenburg

I've seen nothing brilliant. For instance CCl₄ (choice on top of the page) is very transparent, offers only n=1.45, and has drawbacks. CHBr₃ offers n=1.58, no attenuation data.

Maybe you could make a molecule that resembles a dye but shorter so it absorbs in the UV and has still a good polarizability for visible light?