An all-optical switch and third-order optical nonlinearity of 3,4-pyridinediamine

We investigated the third-order nonlinear optical properties of 3,4-pyridinediamine solution. The nonlinear measurements were taken by using single-beam Z-scan technique with cw laser at 473 nm. The effect of varying glucose concentration in a sample solution has been studied. The experimental results show that the nonlinear refractive index, n2, and nonlinear absorption coefficient, β, are strongly dependent on the glucose concentration in a sample solution. The optical limiting properties are measured by a transmission technique. We find that the limiting threshold can be improved by a proper choice of glucose concentration in sample solution. A 3,4-pyridinediamine with 80 mmol glucose concentration showed a good switching property. This phenomenon was demonstrated by waveguiding a transistor–transistor logic modulated cw 473 nm laser beam as an excitation beam modulated at 10 Hz frequency collinearly with a continuous-wave SDL-635-100T laser beam of wavelength 653 nm through a quartz cuvette of thickness 1 mm. The results of pump–probe experiments show that the time of switch-on and switch-off of the 3,4-pyridinediamine was in μs for the pump intensity. The energy-dependent transmission studies also reveal better limiting property of the sample compound at nanosecond regime. Also, thermo-optic coefficients have been determined by thermal lens (TL) technique (−9.54 × 10−5 K−1) and it was found to be temperature dependent. This value was compared with result obtained by Z-scan calculations (−7.46 × 10−5 K−1). Thus, the nonlinear response of the material suggests that it has a potential application for high-sensitive photonic devices.