Silica-carbon nanotubes composite coatings as saturable absorbers

Currently, fabrication of CNT and polymer composites for saturable absorbers is very popular. But due to nature of organic polymer matrix, these composites are unstable on higher temperatures or in high energy light exposition. Therefore a sol-gel process for the fabrication for inorganic (i.e. silica) or semi-organic (organic-modified silica) matrix can be a promising way to produce photo-chemically and thermally stable CNT composites. In this work was investigated SWCNT´s solubility in ethanol using different surfactants - Triton, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), and Poly(4-vinylpyridine) (P4VP). Most stable colloidal solution was obtained using a P4VP as surfactant - solutions were stable up to 6 weeks. Therefore this surfactant was used for the fabrication of SWCNT/Silica composite coatings. SWCNT´s was directly dispensed in a colloidal silica sol and coatings made by spin-coating technique. Samples were investigated under optical, atomic force microscopy methods, and optical non-linearity was measured. Thermal stability was investigated using Raman spectroscopy.