Study on the iron oxide/glass nanocomposite materials: fabrication, microstructure and ultrafast nonlinear optical properties

Herein, novel composite glass materials are synthesized by a facile sol–gel approach accompanied with a controlled atmosphere, in which inexpensive iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs) are introduced into sodium borosilicate glasses host. By defining temperature and time limits, two iron oxide NPs with different chemical valence (Fe2O3 NPs and Fe3O4 NPs) were produced in the glass host. The incorporation of iron oxide NPs in a sodium borosilicate glasses matrix vouchsafe the obtained glasses excellent nonlinear optical response. Thus, the Z-scan method using a ultrafast femtosecond laser pulse as fast as 190 fs was employed to evaluate the nonlinear optical feature of as-derived glasses, exhibiting self-focusing effect with reverse saturable absorption. In addition, we have added the new physics analysis of the mechanism on the nonlinear effects in the paper. The obtained results imply that these glass materials are promising candidates for the future development of ultrafast nonlinear devices.