Development of spiropyran-doped poly(dimethylsiloxane) optical waveguides for sensing applications

In this work, we describe the incorporation of spiropyrans (SP) in PDMS for the fabrication of photochromic optical waveguides. We show that adequate SP selection is important for the fabrication of optically transparent PDMS waveguides with low propagation loss, and that the incorporated dyes preserved their photochromic properties.