Z-scan study of nonlinear absorption in gold doped borosilicate glass: Effect of Dy3+

Abstract

Nonlinearity is one of the most important optical properties widely used in opto-electronic devices. In this work, the optical nonlinearity of a series of Bismuth Borosilicate glasses is compared. The glasses prepared through conventional melt-quench technique comprises of Dy2O3, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) and both Dy2O3 and GNPs. XRD is used to confirm the amorphous nature of the glass whereas FESEM is carried out to observe variation in morphology of GNPs with the addition of Dy2O3. Effect of Dy2O3 on particle size is recorded using HRTEM. DTA is carried out to observe the variation in thermal behaviour of the material. The highest value of nonlinear absorption coefficient (4.35 × 10−12 cmW−1) and third order nonlinear optical susceptibility of 8.68 × 10−9 esu are observed from Z-scan for the glass containing both Dy2O3 and GNPs. The results conclude that the addition of Dy2O3 enhances the nonlinearity of glass containing gold and thus has promising applications in optical devices.