Study on the highly transmitted Ag–In2O3/glass nanocomposite material: fabrication, microstructure and nonlinear absorption effects

We fabricated a highly transmitted Ag–In2O3/glass nanocomposite material through a sol–gel method plus a controlled gas. Microstructural analysis revealed that the Ag and In elements in the Ag–In2O3 nanostructure exist in two forms: crystalline Ag nanoparticles and non-crystalline In2O3. And the crystalline Ag nanoparticles show the small size, uniform distribution and good dispersion in the glass host, thus triggering the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect and the quantum confinement effect. Remarkably, the Ag–In2O3/glass nanocomposite material exhibits the high transmittance greater than 70% in almost the whole visible spectral range. Open-aperture Z-scan technique further showed a typical two-photon absorption effect in the Ag–In2O3/glass nanocomposite material, where the nonlinear absorption coefficient was determined to be ~1.1 × 10−9 cm W−1, and interestingly, the normalized transmittance decreased with increasing input fluence. The present results blaze a new path to develop the metal/glass nanocomposite materials with high transmittance, significant nonlinear absorption effects and potential optical limiting behavior. In addition, the mechanism on the nonlinear absorption effects were also discussed in this paper, such as the SPR effect, the quantum confinement effect, the thermal effects, the nonlinear scattering effect and the resonant nonlinear effect.