Flexible alteration of optical nonlinearities of iodine charge-transfer complexes in solutions

The type of donor used is found to influence greatly the optical nonlinearities of iodine charge-transfer (CT) complexes in solutions for several solvents. The magnitude and sign changes of nonlinear absorption of iodine CT complexes for different solvents as donors are observed, which implies the transition from saturable absorption to reverse saturable absorption. Compared with C-60 in toluene, iodine CT complexes with toluene and benzene demonstrate larger reverse saturable absorption. Meanwhile, flexible alteration of optical nonlinearities is easily obtained by adjusting the mixture ratio of different solvents, yielding a prospective means of constructing a nonlinear medium with a large nonlinear coefficient. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America