Fabrication and third-order optical nonlinearities of Na2O–B2O3–SiO2 glasses containing metallic Bi, Bi2O3 and Bi2S3 crystals

We report a facile method to realize the fabrication of Na2O–B2O3–SiO2 glass containing metallic Bi, Bi2O3 and Bi2S3 crystals. The microstructures of the glasses are investigated in detail by means of XRD, XPS, and TEM techniques. Furthermore, the third-order optical nonlinearities of the glasses are measured using femtosecond Z-scan technique at the wavelength of 800 nm with a pulse width 200 fs. Results show that the glasses exhibit the large third-order optical nonlinearities, and the third-order optical nonlinear susceptibility χ(3) of Na2O–B2O3–SiO2 glass containing metallic Bi, Bi2O3 and Bi2S3 crystals are determined to be 5.81 × 10−11 esu, 6.01 × 10−11 esu, and 8.71 × 10−10 esu, respectively. In particular, the third-order optical nonlinear absorption of the glasses are excellent, which have potential applications in the lasers as Q-switching elements and optical limiters.