4,166,043 8/1979 Uhlmann et al. ....................... 252/300 4,286,957 9/1981 Le Naour-Sene ........................... 8/471 4,289,497 9/1981 Hovey .................. ... 252/300 4,367,170 1/1983 Uhlmann et al. ... 252/586 4,637,698 1/1987 Kwak et al. ......... ... 351/163 4,774,035 9/1988 Carmelite et al. ... 264/1.4 4,880,667 11/1989 Welch ............. ... 427/160 4,983,335 1/1991 Matsuo et al. ........................... 264/1.4 US005.730911A

The invention relates to an optical article comprising a Sub strate coated with an abrasionand Scratch-resistant coating composed of a lower layer and an upper layer that do adhere to each other, the upper layer and the lower layer being layers of cured upper and lower layer compositions, said upper layer composition comprising at least one organosilane, or a hydro lyZate thereof, of formula RYSi(X) and at least one compound, or a hydrolyzate thereof, of formula M(Z), the following ratio being lower than 2.3:

This paper describes a polymer manufacturing technique for the realization of sealed liquid tanks with a high filling ratio. It is based on a lithographic process combined with lamination and can be performed on any type of substrate: Si, glass or polymer films. We demonstrated the encapsulation of solvents or inks in multilevel tanks on large surface area (>118 cm2) without any damage of the stored liquid. This micro-fabrication technology proposes a significant breakthrough for micro-fluidic applications. We propose a one step process for the filling and sealing of tanks which are performed simultaneously. Tanks can be integrated at any level in the micro-fluidic system with a perfect filling rate and an excellent tightness.

Mineral liquid crystals are materials in which mineral's intrinsic properties are combined with the self‐organization behavior of colloids. However, the use of such a system for practical application, such as optical switching, has rarely been demonstrated due to the fundamental drawbacks of colloidal systems such as limited dispersion stability. Studying colloidal suspensions of LaPO4 nanorods, it is found that drastic improvement of colloidal stability can be obtained through a transfer of particles from water towards ethylene glycol, thus enabling the investigation of liquid crystalline properties of these concentrated suspensions. Using polarization microscopy and small‐angle x‐ray scattering (SAXS), self‐organization into nematic and columnar mesophases is observed enabling the determination of the whole phase diagram as a function of ionic strength and rod volume fraction. When an external alternative electric field is applied, a very efficient orientation of the nanorods in the liquid‐crystalline suspension is obtained, which is associated with a significant optical birefringence. These properties, combined with the high colloidal stability, are promising for the use of such high transparent and athermal material in electro‐optical devices.

Spatial light modulators are often used to implement phase modulation. Since they are pixelated, the phase function is usually approximated by a regularly sampled piecewise constant function, and the periodicity of the pixel sampling generates annoying diffraction peaks. We theoretically investigate two pixelation techniques: the isophase method and a new nonperiodic method derived from the Voronoi tessellation technique. We show that, for a suitable choice of parameters, the diffraction peaks disappear and are replaced by a smoothly varying halo. We illustrate the potential of these two techniques for implementing a lens function and wavefront correction.