Two-photon polymerization of titanium-containing sol-gel composites for three-dimensional structure fabrication

In this work, we have synthesized and characterized a novel, titanium-containing hybrid material that can be structured three-dimensionally using two-photon polymerization. We investigate the effect on the structurability of the increase of titanium isopropoxide and methacrylic acid in this photosensitive composite. We show that while it is possible to make transparent thin films with a titanium isopropoxide molar content as high as 90%, three-dimensional structures can be made only when the titanium isopropoxide molar content is less than 50%. We measure the refractive index of films with different titanium isopropoxide: methacrylic acid concentrations and we show that while the refractive index increases linearly with the titanium isopropoxide, the increase of the methacrylic acid content does not affect the refractive index of the material.