AgScP 2 S 6 van der Waals Layered Crystal: A Material with a Unique Combination of Extreme Nonlinear Optical Properties

• Published in: The journal of physical chemistry letters 2023-04, Vol.14 (14), p.3527-3534
• Main Authors: Mushtaq, Aamir, Noor, Mohamed Yaseen, Siebenaller, Ryan, DeAngelis, Emma, Fisher, Adam, Clink, Liam, Twardowski, Justin, Salman, Gülsüm Kılıç, Myers, Roberto C, Rowe, Emmanuel, Conner, Benjamin S, Susner, Michael A, Chowdhury, Enam
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1948-7185; 1948-7185
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c00348

Research in two-dimensional layered materials (2DLMs) has exploded over the past several years for a variety of applications in photonics and optoelectronics. The 2D nature of these materials allows for a very local electronic probe of material as well as flexible integration with other functional components. Herein, using the femtosecond Z-scan technique, we report a giant two photon absorption (TPA) process and its saturation in the van der Waals gapped silver scandium thiophosphate (AgScP S ) crystal. We have found a TPA coefficient of the order of 10 cm/GW which is orders of magnitude larger compared to many existing semiconductors and nonlinear crystals. Furthermore, we found a TPA cross-section of 10 GM and characterized the optical limiting (OL) response (0.2 mJ/cm ) and the multipulse laser damage threshold (1.09 ± 0.19 J/cm ). The combination of giant TPA, extremely low OL, and very high damage threshold suggests that this material could be extremely useful in applications like optical limiters or switches.