日本ゼオライト学会　刊行物 Publication of Japan Zeolite Association

Organic compounds surrounded by layered inorganic polymers such as clay minerals exhibit specific properties significantly different from those in solution states and/or in crystalline states. This is due to steric limitation of the surrounded space and/or layer charge of the layered polymers. Although such inorganic-organic hybrid materials are expected to exhibit specific optical properties, such materials are typically light-scattering media. Difficulties in fabricating a low light-scattering hybrid material with a sufficient thickness have hindered the use of such materials for optical materials, especially for nonlinear optical (NLO) materials which require considerably low light-scattering. Hybrid films fabricated through a simple protocol, which involves mixing an aqueous dispersion of an exfoliated clay mineral with a dye solution, followed by filtration, are known to show relatively low light-scattering properties. We have optimized fabrication conditions of the protocol. The obtained films were not only suitable as NLO devices in both size and thickness but also possessed very low light-scattering properties. In the present paper, the key points of the novel protocol are introduced. Salient NLO properties characteristic to the hybrid materials have been found from the novel films. Two-photon absorption and optical second harmonic generation properties of the films are exemplified.