Inherent light scattering losses by amorphous optical polymer glasses

Inherent light scattering losses by several methacrylic ester polymers were investigated. The intensities of polarized scattering (VV) from poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) reported so far were in the order of 10⁻⁵ cm⁻¹ even in a sample polymerized with rigorous purification, and had angular dependence in its VV intensity, which implied the existence of large size heterogeneities of several hundreds Å. In this paper, alkyl(ethyl and isobutyl) and fluoroalkyl (trifluoroethyl and trihydroperfluoropropyl) methacrylate glasses as well as PMMA, in which the VV intensities were in the order of 10⁻⁶ cm⁻¹ and no large size of heterogeneities were recognized, were prepared for the first time. Considering that our data are quite near the value predicted by the thermally induced fluctuation theory, and on the basis of our previous study, it is suggested that the scattering data presented in this paper show an inherent limited loss for these methacrylic ester polymer glasses in the atmosphere.