https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211005124739.htm > The results appear online on October 5 in the journal Nature Communications. > As the name implies, chalcogenide glasses contain one or more chalcogens -- chemical elements such as sulfur, selenium and tellurium. But there's one member of the family they leave out: oxygen. Their material properties make them a strong choice for advanced electronic applications such as optical switching, ultra-small direct laser writing (think tiny rewritable CDs) and molecular fingerprinting. But because they strongly absorb wavelengths of light in the visible and ultraviolet parts of electromagnetic spectrum, chalcogenide glasses have long been constrained to the near- and mid-infrared with respect to their applications in photonics.