Why Hybrid Glass Technologies?

HGT is a pioneer in the technology of UV-curable hybrid glass protective coatings and claddings for specialty optical fibers. Our hybrid glasses represent various combinations of inorganic oxides and organic polymers. Such combinations result in outstanding protective abilities, including superior thermal, mechanical and corrosion resistance.

In addition to our basic UV or heat curable hybrid glasses, HGT offers custom material design services. If you have a specific need to protect your product from heat, water or chemical corrosion, contact us to learn which hybrid glass materials can work for you. We remain flexible for either small or large projects to find the best hybrid material that fits your specific needs.

Why Sol-Gel?

The sol-gel process is, in general, method of for making glass/ceramic materials that involves the transition of a system from a liquid (the colloidal “sol") into a solid (the "gel") phase.

sol-gel method, because of the use of homogeneous liquid solutions and the ability to form gels at room temperature, is a cost effective convenient route to prepare mono and multicomponent glasses, some of which would not be possible to form by common melting process. The sol-gel technique enables the processing of glasses at low temperature in various desirable shapes, i.e. monoliths, films, fibers or nanosized powders. More importantly the sol-gel technique allows doping and distributing organic molecules within the inorganic oxide networks to form organic-inorganic hybrids. Such combinations lead to countless novel materials.

So Why sol-gel? Because it is a truly a convenient, low temperature process of the new millennium. www.solgel.com

Why Hybrids?

There is a critical need for innovative approaches in the development and processing of materials that can aid the advancement of electronic, photonic and other interdisciplinary technologies. Advanced technologies require advanced materials. Organic-inorganic hybrids are ideally poised to accept this challenge.

Organic-inorganic hybrids can be formed from various combinations of metal alkoxides and polymers to create a nanoscale admixture of inorganic-oxides and organic polymers. Hybrids, composed of inorganic oxides covalently bonded to organic polymers, are of special interest, since they benefit from the lack of interface imperfections. Our objective is to produce a family of materials with properties intermediate between those of polymers and glasses, which can deliver specific and unique requirements of the material properties not easily affordable by organic polymers and glasses.