Chemical Processing of Novel Multifunctional Materials for Sensor Protection against Laser Threats

There is an immediate need for the development of materials that could function to protect human vision and light sensitive equipment from laser based weapons. The goal of the just concluded research was to synthesize a compound that would incorporate a nonlinear two photon absorbing functional group adjacent to a photoreactive moiety. This innovative approach would lead to broad band high optical transparency at lower power levels and efficient and fast attenuation at higher power levels. The use of organic compounds in this application ensures that the molecular structure could be further optimized by careful adjustment of the molecular structure. The synthesized compound, anthracene leuconitrile, was found to be photochemically unstable and took an inappropriately long time for the reconversion from the absorbing to the transmitting form.