Nonlinear optical absorption characteristics of PbMoO4 single crystal for optical limiter applications

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Molybdate materials take great interest due to their photocatalytic and optoelectronic applications. In this report, PbMoO4 single crystal, one of the member of molybdate materials, is grown by Czochralski technique and the change of nonlinear absorption characteristic depending on the input intensity was reported. Linear absorption analysis revealed the band gap energy and Urbach energy as to be 3.12 and 0.52 eV, respectively. Nonlinear absorption characteristics of the PbMoO4 single crystal was examined with the open aperture (OA) Z-scan experiments at 532 nm excitation wavelength under various input intensities. Fitting results of the OA Z-scan experiments indicated that PbMoO4 single crystal has nonlinear absorption (NA) behavior, and NA coefficient (βeff) increased from 7.11 × 10−8 to 1.96 × 10−7 m/W with increasing input intensity. This observation was associated with the increase of the contribution of the free carrier absorption to the NA with the generation of more excited electrons with increasing input intensity. At the 532 nm excitation wavelength (2.32 eV), the dominant mechanisms were revealed as one photon and free carrier absorptions. The optical limiting threshold of the PbMoO4 single crystal was obtained to be 4.91 mJ/cm2. The reported results indicated that PbMoO4 single crystal can be a good optical limiter in the visible wavelength region due to its effective NA behavior.