I grabbed this from the 10-k they do a good job of explaining why Oxygen isn’t an issue. However IMO I think that in the end they will fill the device with some kind of inert gas like nitrogen or argon to prevent thermal expansion, contraction and moisture issues. (I just made up the part about the inert gas but we’ll see if I’m right.)
Anywhos I don’t think the host polymer is needed to protect the molecule.
Aromaticity
Aromaticity causes an extremely high degree of molecular stability. It is a molecular arrangement wherein atoms combine into a ring or rings and share their electrons among each other. Aromatic compounds are extremely stable because the electronic charge distributes evenly over a great area preventing hostile moieties, such as oxygen and free radicals, from finding an opening to attack.
Our patented and patent pending molecular architectures are based on a well-understood chemical and quantum mechanical occurrence known as aromaticity. Aromaticity provides a high degree of molecular stability. Aromaticity is what will enable our core molecular structures to maintain stability under a broad range of polymerization conditions that otherwise appear to affect other current polymer molecular designs. Polymers, polymer-based devices, hybrid devices and the processes used to create them are often patentable, which can provide the developers of such technology with a significant competitive advantage. We consider our proprietary intellectual property to be unique.
Zwitterionic-aromatic push-pull
Most charge-transfer dyes (e.g. Disperse Red 1, CLD, FTC) have an excited state (such as during photonic absorption) wherein a full charge is separated across the molecule. Such a molecule is said to be excited-state zwitterionic. Within such a molecular system the zwitterionic state is unstable and the molecule typically collapses rapidly into its lower dipole ground state. In our patented molecular designs, the excited state is further stabilized by the aromatization of the molecular core. In that aromaticity stabilizes this excited state, it is said to "pull" the molecule into this higher energy state; on the other hand, the unstable zwitterionic state is said to "push" the molecule out of the excited state.
Our Electro-Optic Technology Approach
Our proposed solution to produce high-performance, high-stability electro-optic polymers for high-speed (wide bandwidth) telecommunication applications lies in a less mainstream, yet firmly established, scientific phenomenon called aromaticity. Aromaticity causes a high degree of molecular stability. It is a molecular arrangement wherein atoms combine into multi-membered rings and share their electrons among each other. Aromatic compounds are stable because the electronic charge distributes evenly over a great area preventing hostile moieties, such as oxygen and free radicals, from finding an opening to attack.
For the past two decades, diverse corporate interests, including, to our knowledge, IBM, Lockheed Martin, DuPont, AT&T Bell Labs, Corning, Honeywell and 3M, as well as numerous universities and U.S. Government Agencies, have been attempting to produce high-performance, high-stability electro-optic polymers for high-speed (wide bandwidth) telecommunication applications. These efforts have largely been unsuccessful due, in our opinion, to the industry's singular adherence to an industry pervasive engineering model known as the Bond Length Alternation ("BLA") theory model. The BLA model, like all other current industry-standard molecular designs, consists of molecular designs containing long strings of atoms called polyene chains. Longer polyene chains provide higher electro-optic performance, but are also more susceptible to environmental threats, which result in unacceptably low-performing, thermally unstable electro-optic polymers.
As a result, high frequency modulators engineered with electro-optic polymers designed on the BLA model or any other polyene chain design models are unstable over typical operating temperature ranges, and often exhibit performance degradation within days, hours or even minutes. Similarly, lower frequency modulators exhibit comparable failings, but to a lesser extent. These flaws, in most cases, have prevented commercial quality polymer-based modulators operating at 10-40Gb/s from entering the commercial marketplace. The thermal stability of these devices does not generally meet the minimum Telcordia GR-468 operating temperature range (-40 degrees Celsius to +85 degrees Celsius) much less the more harsh MILSPEC 883D (military specification) range of -55 degrees Celsius to 150 degrees Celsius.
None of our patented molecular designs rely on the BLA polyene chain design model.
Heterocyclical Anti-Aromatic Systems
Two of our provisional patents cover heterocyclical anti-aromatic electronic conductive pathways, which are the heart of our high-performance, high-stability molecular designs. The completely heterocyclical nature of our molecular designs "lock" conductive atomic orbitals into a planar (flat) configuration, which provides improved electronic conduction and a significantly lower reaction to environmental threats (e.g. thermal, chemical, photochemical, etc.) than the BLA design paradigm employed by other competitive electro-optic polymers.
The anti-aromatic nature of these structures dramatically improves the "zwitterionic-aromatic push-pull" of the systems, providing for low energy charge transfer. Low energy charge transfer is important for the production of extremely high electro-optic character.
Our innovative solution lies in a very well known scientific phenomenon called aromaticity, which causes a high degree of molecular stability. Aromaticity is a molecular arrangement wherein atoms combine into multi-membered rings and share their electrons among each other. Aromatic compounds are extremely stable because the electronic charge distributes evenly over a great area preventing hostile moieties, such as oxygen and free radicals, from finding an opening to attack. Until now, to our knowledge, no one has been able to propose molecular designs that could effectively exploit aromaticity in the design of a high-performance electro-optic polymer.
We believe now that we have fabricated electro-optic molecular architectures that do in fact exhibit extremely high thermal stability, our technologies may soon replace inorganic electro-optic materials in the marketplace due to their considerable advantages over traditional inorganic fiber-optic materials.
AI
