Insights of Chalcogenide Glasses for Innovation in Applied Science

Abstract

Chalcogenides are low-phonon-energy materials and are generally transparent from the visible up to the infrared. Interest in chalcogenide glasses has, over the past few years, increased significantly as glasses, crystals and alloys find new life in a wide range of photonic devices. Chalcogenide glasses have many unique properties that allow them to be used in a variety of optical applications. Chalcogenide glass fibers transmit in the infrared red region, hence they have potential applications in the civil, medical, and military areas. Infrared transparency also allows them to be used in sensors for molecules that have “fingerprints” in the 2 to 25 µm range. The application in optics, photonic, optoelectronics increased the demand in glasses, which can transmit a radiation in infrared range up to the wavelength ~2 µm. Chalcogenide glasses represent one of the major categories of amorphous semiconductors because of their physical properties such as the switching and memory effects and for their IR transmittance.