Revisiting aqueous alkaline silicates as precursors for sol‐gel optical coatings

Alkaline silicates are well‐known soluble silica derivatives already widely used for industrial purposes. Nevertheless, their applications for the elaboration of functional optical coatings have largely been discarded by the sol‐gel community who mainly focused on alkoxide precursors. The objective of this work is to reconsider the alkaline silicates sol‐gel chemistry, targeting optical coatings of a few hundreds of nanometers. The structures of...