<title>Nonlinear absorption of stilbazolium derivatives</title>

Abstract

Stilbazolium derivatives are very attractive nonlinear optical (NLO) materials for photonics and biophotonics applications due to their low linear absorption at low incident intensities in most of the visible spectral range and potentially very strong nonlinear absorption at high intensities. In this work, we investigated the nonlinear absorption of five stilbazolium derivatives, trans-4-[2-(pyrryl)vinyl]-1-methylpyridinium iodide (PVPI), trans-4-[2-(1-ferrocenyl)vinyl]-1-methylpyridinium iodide (FcVPI), trans-4-[2-(1-ferrocenyl)styryl]-1-methylpyridinium iodide (FcSPI), trans-4-[4-(dimethylamino)styryl]-1-methylpyridinium iodide (DASPI) and trans-4-(4-aminostyryl)-1-methylpyridinium iodide (ASPI) using 6 ns and 40 ps laser pulses at 532 nm. These compounds exhibit different nonlinear absorption behavior for nanosecond and picosecond laser pulses. In the nanosecond time regime, they all show reverse saturable absorption, with PVPI exhibiting the best result. With 90% linear transmission in a 2-mm cell, the transmittance of a chloroform solution of PVPI drops to 5% when the incident fluence is increased to 7 J/cm<SUP>2</SUP>. The nonlinear absorption behavior of these compounds is influenced dramatically by the nature of the electron donating group, with reverse saturable absorption decreasing in the order of PVPI&gt;FcVPI&gt;FcSPI&gt;ASPI&gt;DASPI. In contrast, for picosecond laser pulses, only PVPI exhibit slight reverse saturable absorption, while DASPI, FcVPI and FcSPI show saturable absorption, and ASPI shows no nonlinear absorption. The different nonlinear absorption for ns and ps laser pulses may be due to the relative contributions from triplet excited state absorption and singlet excited state absorption.