Lead Sulphide-Doped Silica Xerogel by Sol-gel Technique

Abstract

In this paper, a chemical process based on using sol-gel technique for the preparation of microcrystalline PbS-doped silica xerogel is described. Compared with the absorption spectra of bulk PbS crystals, the absorption edges of microcrystalline PbS-containing material exhibit large blue shift, due to confinement of microfine PbS particles in silica matrix. Because of the non-linear properties, this xerogel finds use in photonics as a cut-off filter.