Enhanced optical nonlinearity of the “nonlinear host–nonlinear guest” glassy nanocomposites made of the mesomorphic cobalt octanoate and noble metal nanoparticles

Abstract

In this paper, we performed optical and nonlinear optical characterization of the newly designed anisotropic glassy materials composed of the mesomorphic cobalt octanoate and noble metal nanoparticles. Both the host (the cobalt octanoate) and the dopant (noble metal nanoparticles) absorb light in the near-UV–visible region of the optical spectrum. This feature allowed us to explore an impact of such overlapped light absorption on the optical nonlinearity of the devised “guest–host” system at the off-resonance frequency by means of the femtosecond laser scanning technique (Z-scan). Minor fractions of noble metal nanoparticles in the cobalt octanoate led to the twofold increase in the optical nonlinearity of the nanocomposites. Optical and nonlinear optical properties of the glassy nanocomposites were analyzed by applying the formalism of the Maxwell Garnett theory.