Facile Synthesis of Tellurium Nanowires and Study of Their Third-Order Nonlinear Optical Properties

Robson R Silva,Cid B Araújo,Sidney J L Ribeiro,Vanessa R Camargo,Lauro J Q Maia,Lok K Shrestha,Hans A G Mejia,Osvaldo N Oliveira Jr,Katsuhiko Ariga

doi:10.5935/0103-5053.20160145

Abstract

We report on the synthesis of single-crystalline tellurium nanowires with different aspect-ratios prepared via facile surfactant-assisted synthesis under mild conditions. Short and long Te nanowires were synthesized by the reduction of tellurium dioxide by hypophosphorous acid with the assistance of polyoxyethylene (23) laurylether and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide, respectively. We obtained uniform single-crystal Te nanowires with diameter below 30 nm and tunable length from 600 nm to 5 µm. Short and long Te nanowires showed remarkable nonlinear absorption and their third-order nonlinear optical properties were investigated by the Z-scan technique with single 80 ps laser pulses at 532 nm. For the first time, it was observed a distinguished switching behavior from saturated absorption to reverse saturated absorption as a function of the laser intensity in one-dimensional Te nanostructures. Although both short and long Te nanowires display such interesting behavior, the short ones exhibited superior optical limiting performance.

Highlights

One-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures (1D-SNS)-nanowires, nanotubes, nanobelts, nanorods have attracted attention in the last years.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7] rich and exciting physics comes into play when the optical properties of 1D-SNS are investigated using high intensity laser beams
Short and long Te nanowires were synthesized via surfactant-assisted synthesis into solution-phase approach at low temperature
We observed the occurrence of saturated absorption (SA) and reverse saturated absorption (RSA) phenomena at 532 nm in Te nanowires displaying different aspect ratios for excitation with 80 ps pulses by using the Z-scan technique

Summary

Introduction

One-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures (1D-SNS)-nanowires, nanotubes, nanobelts, nanorods have attracted attention in the last years.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7] rich and exciting physics comes into play when the optical properties of 1D-SNS are investigated using high intensity laser beams. The third-order optical nonlinearity of Te nanowires displaying different aspect ratios was investigated in aqueous solution using laser pulses of low energy and small repetition pulse rate to prevent thermal effects or destruction of the samples.

Results

Conclusion