Fabricating silver nanoplate/hybrid silica gel glasses and investigating their nonlinear optical absorption behavior

Abstract

Silver nanoplate/hybrid silica gel glasses were prepared via the sol–gel technique. Analysis of ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy extinction spectra confirmed the successful incorporation of silver nanoplates into the hybrid silica gel glasses. The silver nanoplate/hybrid silica gel glass composites are completely noncrystalline because of their low doping level compared with that of the silica matrix. The nonlinear optical absorption behavior of the silver nanoplate/hybrid silica gel glass composites was studied via open-aperture Z-scan technique with 4ns pulse durations at 532nm and 1064nm. The nonlinear optical properties of silver nanoplates are maintained after they were introduced into silica gel glasses. Furthermore, the silver nanoplate/hybrid silica gel glasses exhibit intensity-dependent transformation from saturable absorption (SA) to reverse saturable absorption (RSA). The SA behavior at low excitation intensity can be attributed to the bleaching of ground-state surface plasmon resonance absorption induced by the retarded electronic relaxation process in solid-state gel glasses. By contrast, the RSA at high incident influence may have resulted from excited-state absorption and two-photon absorption.