Study of nonlinear optical absorption properties of V2O5 nanoparticles in the femtosecond excitation regime

Abstract

In this work, we report for the first time, the nonlinear optical absorption properties of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) nanoparticles in the femtosecond excitation regime. V2O5 nanoparticles were synthesized through solution combustion technique. The as-synthesized samples were further characterized using XRD, FESEM, EDAX, TEM and UV–visible spectroscopy. X-ray diffraction results revealed the crystalline nature of the nanoparticles. Electron microscopy studies showed the size of the nanoparticles to be ~200 nm. Open-aperture z-scan technique was employed to study the nonlinear optical absorption behavior of the synthesized samples using a 100-fs laser pulses at 800 nm from a regeneratively amplified Ti: sapphire laser. The mechanism of nonlinear absorption was found to be a three-photon absorption process which was explained using the density of states of V2O5 obtained using density functional theory. These nanoparticles exhibit strong intensity-dependent nonlinear optical absorption and hence could be considered for optical-power-limiting applications.