Nonlinear optical semiconductor nanocrystals and their photonicapplications

摘要

Nonlinear optical materials with large third-order nonlinear susceptibilities and appropriate response time have attractedgreat interests recently because of their potential applications of optical computing, ultrafast switching, optical powerlimiting, and group velocity manipulation. Among nonlinear optical materials, semiconductor nanocrystals, metalnanoparticles, and organic materials have been intensively studied since their nonlinear optical properties may be tuned byvarying their sizes and surface/interface environments. Recently, we investigated the third-order nonlinear opticalproperties of semiconductor nanocrystals both theoretically and experimentally. The possible physical limitation of thethird-order nonlinear susceptibility of typical semiconductor nanocrystal as well as the ways to optimize its nonlinearityhas been studied. Experimental measurements have been compared with theoretical calculations on linear and nonlinearoptical properties of cadmium chalcogenide semiconductor nanocrystals for the photonic applications of opticalswitching, optical power limiting, and group velocity manipulation.