Giant optical limiting effect in Ormosil gel glasses doped with graphene oxide materials

Abstract

Graphene materials have attracted interest in the field of optical limiting because of their outstanding linear and nonlinear optical (NLO) properties. However, poor solubility and agglomeration have limited the practical applications of these materials. Here, hydrophilic graphene oxide materials, including graphene oxide nanosheets (GONSs) and graphene oxide nanoribbons (GONRs) are synthesized. Using a facile sol–gel process, GONSs and GONRs are introduced into a methyltriethoxysilane modified silicate (Ormosil) glass matrix. NLO and optical limiting (OL) properties are investigated using a nanosecond Z-scan technique at 532 nm. Large OL effects of Ormosil hybrid glasses are revealed, whose optical limiting thresholds (F_th = ∼0.03 J cm⁻²) surpass those of corresponding suspensions by a factor of 5–20. We deduce that this behavior is mostly attributed to the combined mechanisms of nonlinear scattering and nonlinear absorption. The hybrid glasses are free of damage after hundreds of continuous laser shots with an energy of 800 μJ. These results indicate that Ormosil hybrid glasses doped with graphene oxide materials could be promising candidates for optical limiters.