Synthesis of Photocurable Fluorenylidene Diacrylate for Optical Application

Abstract

We reported on synthesis and characterization of fluorenylidene diacrylate, which has high refractive index and low optical loss for optical application. Polymer film was easily prepared by spin-coating a solution of monomer with photoinitiator (Irgacure 369) and cured under 365 nm UV light illumination. This film has a good chemical/mechanical resistance as well as a high thermal stability. The refractive index of this film at 830 nm was obtained as 1.5948 and 1.5947 for TE and TM polarization, respectively. Also, this film shows extremely low birefringence of 0.0001 and very low propagation loss of 0.08 dB/cm at 830 nm for TE polarization. It was demonstrated that these newly synthesized fluorenylidene diacrylate was promising candidate for optical waveguide materials.