A new approach to superior optical limiting materials—planar ‘open’ heterothiometallic clustersElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: 1, Preparation and characterization of the planar ‘open’ heterothiometallic clusters; 2, molecular structures of clusters; 3, pump–probe experiment setup and results; 4, ground-state absorption spectra of clusters; 5, figures for Z-scan experiments under open-aperture configuration of clusters; 6, figures of energy-dependent transmittance of clusters; 7, Table 1: limiting thresholds of compounds. See http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/cc/b1/b100395j/

Abstract

A new approach to superior optical limiting materials, utilizing planar ‘open’ skeleton heterothiometallic clusters, is reported by incorporating heavy atoms and altering cluster skeletons and is found to decrease the limiting thresholds to as low as 0.07 J cm⁻², among the best for OL materials.