The primary goal of this review is to present a clear chemical perspective of borates in order to stimulate and facilitate the discovery of new borate-based optical materials. These materials, which exhibit structures as varied as they are complex, are needed to meet the urgent technological milestones. In the current period of rapid sociotechnological breakthroughs, the need for the rational design and discovery of novel borates with superior performance is greater than ever before. Through the sustained efforts of chemists and material scientists, more than 3900 boron-containing compounds, including borate minerals and synthetic borates, have been documented in the scientific literature. This review provides a survey of all the reported anhydrous borates and an analysis of their complex structural chemistry. State-of-the-art progress related to technological advances in borate-based nonlinear optical, birefringent, and self-frequency-doubling materials is surveyed, with special emphasis on the relationships between structural architectures and optical properties. More importantly, this review serves both as a scientific introduction for graduates and post-doctoral researchers to the chemical richness of solid-state borates and as a comprehensive reference for researchers interested in borate-based optical materials.

中文翻译：

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硼酸盐：光学材料的丰富来源

这篇综述的主要目的是提出一种清晰的硼酸盐化学观点，以刺激和促进新的基于硼酸盐的光学材料的发现。这些材料具有复杂的结构，因此需要满足紧急的技术里程碑。在当前快速的社会技术突破时期，对合理设计和发现性能卓越的新型硼酸盐的需求比以往任何时候都更为迫切。经过化学家和材料科学家的不断努力，科学文献中已记录了3900多种含硼化合物，包括硼酸盐矿物和合成硼酸盐。这篇综述提供了对所有报道的无水硼酸盐的调查以及对它们复杂的结构化学的分析。研究了与基于硼酸盐的非线性光学，双折射和自倍频材料的技术进步有关的最新进展，特别强调了结构体系结构和光学特性之间的关系。更重要的是，本综述既可作为毕业生和博士后研究人员对固态硼酸盐化学含量的科学介绍，也可作为对基于硼酸盐的光学材料感兴趣的研究人员的全面参考。