Nanoporous random glassy polymers

Abstract

The present invention discloses a class of random glassy polymer materials, namely nanoporous polymer materials, which contain pores with dimensions ranging from about 1 nm to about 1000 nm. The present invention also discloses a method of making a nanoporous polymer material by controlling the size, shape, volume fraction, and topological features of the pores, which comprises annealing the polymer material at a temperature above its glass transition temperature. The present invention further discloses the use of the resulting nanoporous polymer material to make devices, such as optical devices. For example, the resulting nanoporous polymer can be used to make a planar waveguide that can exhibit an optical loss of less than 0.5 dB/cm.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.