Optical limiting properties in copper oxide thin films under a high-repetition-rate femtosecond laser

Abstract: CuO nanocrystalline thin films are deposited on quartz substrates by pulsed laser deposition. The grown single-phase CuO films are characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectrometer and transmission electron microscopy. The optical nonlinearity of CuO films is investigated by the Z-scan method under a high-repetition-rate (HRR) femtosecond laser (800nm, 50fs, 80MHz). The CuO nanocrystalline films are found to be good optical limiters with a limiting threshold of 0.3GW/cm2 and a damage threshold of 1.65GW/cm2. The possible mechanisms of the optical limiting are also proposed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]