Polydimethylsiloxane in Optics

Optics is the science of light, which supports disciplines like biology, medicine, engineering, materials science, chemistry, physics and more. Optics helps to improve diagnostic speed, portable and user-friendly devices, cost efficiency, and sensitivity. Through time, optical components have been made with hard and non-deformable materials. However, traditional optical elements can no longer meet the needs of the market, and new optical elements are needed, such as materials with higher degrees of freedom. A candidate that has been proposed to replace traditional optical materials is polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS or silicone) because it presents suitable characteristics like biocompatibility, nontoxicity, flexibility, non-biodegradability, high transparency in the UV-visible range, low scattering and absorption, easy fabrication, cost-effective relation and more. Many articles have reported the fabrication of optical components with silicone and the use of these components in optical devices. Unfortunately, there is no review that comprehensively covers the field of optics in relation to the application of silicone. The present work is intended as a descriptive overview to provide a clear and accessible review of the topic, rather than a comparative analysis. Articles describing the use of silicone in the fabrication of optical components during the past 20 years were reviewed.