Low-loss deuterated organic solvents for visible and near-infrared photonics

Abstract

Organic solvents exhibit strong absorption in the visible and near-infrared, making their use in many photonic applications questionable. Here we show that deuteration can overcome this issue by substantially reducing CH-overtone absorption via increased effective oscillator masses and red-shifted absorption features. Spectroscopic measurements of selected non-aromatic and benzene-based solvents show that the deuterated configurations have by at least one order of magnitude lower absorption through the entire visible and near-infrared domain, reaching attenuation levels far below 1 dB/cm. Especially deuterated chloroform and toluene reveal broadband transmission windows from 450 nm to 1.5 μm with losses below 0.1 dB/cm. Our results identify deuterated organic systems as promising candidates for applications in optofluidics, spectroscopy and nonlinear light-liquid interaction.