Materials for optical data processing

On photochemical hole-burning, surprisingly narrow holes were obtained in the absorption band of quinizarin-YbC13 complexes, trapped within a glass-like inorganic-organic copolymer. These polymers were prepared by sol-gel processing of organically substituted alkoxysilanes and Al(OBu^s)<inf>3</inf>. Disperse Red 1, a very efficient molecule for NLO applications, was also embedded in sol-gel-matrix without changing the optical absorption spectrum.