What is it about?

Optical glasses possessing large third-order optical nonlinear susceptibility and fast response times are promising materials for the development of advanced nonlinear photonic devices. In this context, gold nanoparticle (NP)-doped borate glasses were synthesized via the melt-quench method. The nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of thus prepared glasses were investigated at different wavelengths (i.e., at 532 nm using nanosecond pulses, at 750 nm, 800 nm, and 850 nm wavelengths using femtosecond, MHz pulses).

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Why is it important?

At 532 nm, open aperture (OA) Z-scan signatures of gold NP-doped borate glasses demonstrated reverse saturable absorption (RSA), attributed to mixed intra-band and interband transitions, while in the 750‒850 nm region, the OA Z-scan data revealed the presence of saturable absorption (SA), possibly due to intra-band transitions. The NLO coefficients were evaluated at all the spectral regions and further compared with some of the recently reported glasses. The magnitudes of obtained NLO coefficients clearly demonstrate that the investigated glasses are potential materials for photonic device applications.

Perspectives

Antimony sodium borate glasses embedded with gold NPs were synthesized through the method of melt quench. The absorption spectrum evidenced the presence of Au-NPs inside the glass matrix by exhibiting an SPR peak of Au-NPs at 566 nm and is found to red shifted with increase in doping concentration of gold. The HR-TEM images further confirmed the existence of Au0 NPs having a mean particle size of 19 nm in NB-1 glass and 25 nm in NB-2 glass. OA Z-scan results at 532 nm excitation demonstrated an enhanced RSA due to 2PA which is attributed to mixed intra-band and interband transitions, while in near-IR spectral excitations the glasses demonstrated SA kind of nonlinearity is attributed to intra-band transitions.

Professor Venugopal Rao Soma
University of Hyderabad

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This page is a summary of: Nonlinear optical studies of sodium borate glasses embedded with gold nanoparticles, Applied Physics B Photophysics and Laser Chemistry, October 2018, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s00340-018-7074-y.
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